North Korea Took $2 Billion in Cyberattacks To Fund Weapons Program (reuters.com) 116
An anonymous reader shares a report: North Korea has generated an estimated $2 billion for its weapons of mass destruction programs using "widespread and increasingly sophisticated" cyberattacks to steal from banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, according to a confidential U.N. report seen by Reuters on Monday. Pyongyang also "continued to enhance its nuclear and missile programmes although it did not conduct a nuclear test or ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) launch," said the report to the U.N. Security Council North Korea sanctions committee by independent experts monitoring compliance over the past six months.
The experts said North Korea "used cyberspace to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks to steal funds from financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges to generate income." They also used cyberspace to launder the stolen money, the report said.
The experts said North Korea "used cyberspace to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks to steal funds from financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges to generate income." They also used cyberspace to launder the stolen money, the report said.
Classic villain? (Score:1, Insightful)
They steal from you to get stuff they can use to threaten you even more... Really feels like an act of war.
When are we going to liberate all the North Korean people from this psychotic guy?
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Were you raised in front of a TV pumping out pro-American propaganda? That is, are you the average cluless little American? You sure sound like it.
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Haha...so funny this was modded -1. It should be +5 Insightful.
Our nuclear weapons...America, fuck yeah!!!
Their nuclear weapons...Weapons of mass destruction!!!
Americans need to ask themselves how a nation of 25 million starving peasant goat fuckers (if you believe the propaganda) managed to develop nuclear weapons and rocket technology. Could it be the banquet of bullshit you've been fed all your life isn't 100% true?
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The world would be better off if North Korea liberated the USA.
FTFY.
Re:Classic villain? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no mystery. The 26 million peasants are starving because the Kims have been devoting most of the country's resources to the nuclear weapons program. The rest goes to making sure the Kims and their trusted flunkies don't have to live that way.
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Kim is looking for a way out. He knows that this can't go on forever. Eventually all dictators fall, and he has to find a way forward for NK that doesn't involve his neck in a noose.
There is an opportunity to end hostilities and start to rehabilitate NK. We are probably going to have to accept some solution that lets Kim get away with crimes against humanity to avoid an even worse outcome, but if we can hold our noses long enough we have a chance to help 25 million Koreans.
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Haha...so funny this was modded -1. It should be +5 Insightful.
Our nuclear weapons...America, fuck yeah!!!
Their nuclear weapons...Weapons of mass destruction!!!
Americans need to ask themselves how a nation of 25 million starving peasant goat fuckers (if you believe the propaganda) managed to develop nuclear weapons and rocket technology. Could it be the banquet of bullshit you've been fed all your life isn't 100% true?
Partly. And partly because China doesn't want anyone they cannot control on their border. China i think is hedging it's bets. Its got Hong Kong it's liberal aunt as its faux democratic state. And at the other end of the spectrum it's got North Korea, It's batshit crazy but still completely loyal uncle.
If North Korea falls to the west then China has a potentially unfriendly right on its border. They would rather have North Korea.
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It isn't that they'd have an unfriendly on their northern border, they already trade with S. Korea. Rather, they don't want an example of faux-market economy of a democratic state on their northern border. It would make Jinping's dick look small.
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As the Chinese economy is already considerably larger than the US economy (by PPP) Trump's dick is the one that looks decidedly smaller. Or Washington's, to be more exact.
China is now a wealthier, more equal, fairer, more just, more law-abiding society than the USA.
Not that that's hard.
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Historically Korea has had technology and living standards comparable to China's. South Korea and China are among the world's wealthiest nations today, and North Korea is right between them.
As for 25 million people, how many North Korean civilians were killed in the "Korean War"? (Otherwise known as "the American war to keep Korea artificially split in half", just as the "Vietnam War" was "the American war to keep Vietnam artificially split in half").
Most sources available on the Web are hopelessly biased a
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Anyhow if you knew anything about history you would know that those bombs we dropped on Japan saved more Korean lives than were taken by the bombs dropped on Korea.
I have a degree in history from Cambridge University.
You?
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When are we going to liberate all the North Korean people from this psychotic guy?
Please clarify "we", and what you mean with "liberate". I would think that 25 million is a large enough # of people to decide the fate of one guy & his entourage. No need for outsiders to get involved.
Unless the NK government performs an actual, physical attack (as opposed to cyberattacks, or the regular sabre rattling) that harms a significant # of people outside NK. Of course if that were to happen, all bets are off.
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You mean like sinking a ship, say? Or firing on a destroyer? Threatening annihilation of neighbors with illegal nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, maybe? We should wait until they do it twice, just to be sure?
You do realize that the US government has done all those things - and therefore deserves to be wiped out?
Not only has it threatened: it has actually used nuclear weapons to kill civilians. It has used chemical weapons on a massive scale, and there is a lot of evidence that it has used biological weapons and continues to develop them today.
Re:Classic villain? (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as we all decide a few million South Korean casualties and crashing one of the most important economies in the world is worth it.
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When are we going to liberate all the North Korean people from this psychotic guy?
It will take longer than it should, but it will start sooner than you think.
Don't forget, economic sanctions remain firmly in place and every missile Kim shoots into the sea is one less he has to spout off about. Trump was right, he's got missiles that work and could target Kim's non-existent lap and hit it. Kim has stuff that is as ineffective as the V2 was in WW2. Sure, he can keep shooting fireworks into the Sea of Japan like he's celebrating the 4th of July, but what more can he do but talk big?
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"Don't forget, economic sanctions remain firmly in place"
Firmly?
"he can keep shooting fireworks into the Sea"
He's keeping his citizen's morale up after the US's war ships' threats of nuclear annihilation.
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Lil' Kimmy doesn't give a flying rat's ass about his "citizens' " (read: serfs') morale. What he cares about is not looking like a weenie to the military, which is the only group in N. Korea that can give him that final ride on a pig (great video a few years back).
Re:Classic villain? (Score:5, Insightful)
When are we going to liberate all the North Korean people from this psychotic guy?
You might want to read some history books. Other countries, even when ruled by despots, don't like being "liberated" by foreign invaders.
You might also want to learn about the fallacy of believing your own propaganda. When I was a kid, I was fed a lot of propaganda about China. Then I grew up, learned Chinese, and lived there for several years. It was absolutely nothing like what I was told.
I have never been to North Korea, and have no first hand knowledge. But I am extremely skeptical about the propaganda that the US government and the MSM are spoon feeding us about NK.
Also, there is nothing "psychotic" about Kim's behavior. It is perfectly rational. If he negotiated like a normal stable person, we would demand a balanced result. But by acting like an erratic and petulant kook, we end up agreeing to any outcome that is even halfway sane. For 70 years, the Kims have won concession after concession, while giving up nothing. You really think he is the crazy one?
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"nothing like what I was told"
OK, so there isn't a government-run Internet censorship program preventing the free flow of ideas from the rest of the world in?
And smog isn't so bad in some cites due to overpopulation that they broadcast live streams of the sun from clearer locations so that people still remember what the sun looks like?
if that's propaganda, then I've been fooled.
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When are we going to liberate
When they find oil.
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We're going to unleash Texas on them? Oh the horror...
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China won't let you. They like having NK as a buffer between themselves and South Korea, which is closely aligned with the US. The last thing they want is US forces on their doorstep.
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"Computerville"?
UN (Score:4, Funny)
This isn't a problem. The UN will stop it, because cyberattacks are illegal and they are doing stuff against UN resolutions.
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This isn't a problem. The UN will stop it, because cyberattacks are illegal and they are doing stuff against UN resolutions.
I bet that koolaid tastes good...
Ahahahahaha! (Score:2, Insightful)
And in the process playing Trump for the imbecile that the is.
He actually thinks he makes great deals.
And trashing the Iran Nuke deal just because "Fuck Obama!" and for his moronic supporters who thought it was this "horrible" deal because that is what they were told to think by their conservative media puppet masters.
And we got a Trump induced recession coming our way.
And instead of healthcare that's supposed to be "better" than Obamacare, their gonna take it away. Because, "fuck Obama".
The banks are up to
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>And trashing the Iran Nuke deal just because "Fuck Obama!"
The moral of the story here folks is that the President cannot make a deal without the Senate. You would think a constitutional lawyer would know that but apparently he played hooky on that day of class.
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FTFY.
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I am sure it was comforting to Obama and friends using that line "this isn't a 'treaty'" but it was an empty promise as soon as his term was up.
Duh. Old news, but worth repeating? (Score:2)
Just came across another version of the same news in a book that was published some years ago. Perhaps McMafia from 2008, Phishing and Countermeasures from 2007, or even a side note in a book about Putin?
I still think the solution should start with serious countermeasures against the email spammers. It's all the same kind of poisonous noise, but the North Koreans are just producing some especially noxious and toxic flavors. If the big email providers (like the google) would stop playing nice with "Live
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Binary Money (Score:2)
You expect me to believe that North Korea is turning ones and zeroes into weapons? I find it far more likely that:
1) NK turned cryptocoins into cash
2) Manufacturers/engineers/nuclear physicists were intimidated/threatened into working on weapons programs
3) The cash was pocketed because they don't need to pay the above people
It's easy to forget that in a place that's not a free market, where people are prohibited from traveling and can be strong-armed into effectively working for free, money isn't needed in
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Re:Binary Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea. The US is totally morally equivalent to North Korea. I saw a CNN, NBC, and Wapo report about concentration camps on the southern border!!!!
>America started a war that it couldn't finish
Yea. Shame on the US for upholding a defense pact with the South Koreans. We should have left them to be enslaved by the Kim family with the rest of the NK and vetoed the UN response. Shame on the US and UN for not able to push back swell of Chinese from the northern mountains. I am sure you would have had the foresight in the 50's to know the Chinese would not have gotten involved and that the US should signal to the world that defense agreements are toilet paper.
>To then sanction the shit out of North Korea so that their people are starving and living in squalor and attempt to justify that as bad governance by North Korea is just ludicrous.
You are right. We should just trade with them and allow them to "unify" the peninsula and allow them to enslave many more millions of people. Why stop at the peninsula? After all, as you say the Norks are morally equivalent to the US. It's not like we try to get food to the people but their government is so corrupt they would rather their own people starve to death than accept that help.
You are delusional. It actually makes me angry how delusional you are.
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Point of personal privilege.
Jazz hands.
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What?
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I assume he's referring to the (former) imprisonment of people who were drafted but didn't report for duty. AFAIK noone was drafted as a military engineer, though. Treason laws weren't applied, either.
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They must be hiding them well, because I can't find the flags at the vast majority of houses in my neighborhood. Hyper-patriotic people are creepy for sure, but it's ridiculous stereotyping to claim every American is one of them.
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Unlike the USA who just says, "build this or work on that or you are a traitor and we will lock you away for so long your family will forget what you look like".
Are you daft? Clearly, you've never been to the U.S. nor do you have a clue about it.
"North Korea - Every house has a picture of the current leader."
Yes, because they kill you if you don't.
"USA - Every house in the US has an American flag flying."
Again, it's clear you've never been to and know nothing about the United States. Some people fly the fl
MNKGA! (Score:1)
We Made N. Korea Great Again!
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Well, I'm sure they have access to satellites (overtly or covertly) and any land or terrestrial air gapped links almost certainly run through China, so unless you want to convince China to cut the connections, this is probably a non-starter.
drafted (Score:3)
>>steal from banks and cryptocurrency exchanges
They'll steal from anything. Buzzwords too, sure, if there was money to be made.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
The hackers were required to earn up to $100,000 a year, through whatever means they could
They were trying to crack high-end software that analyzed live orchestral performances and wrote musical scores. The men worked in shorts and relied on fans to combat the heat and humidity; water dripped from the ceiling. Stacked against one wall were packages of ramen.
Elite programmers? No way. We were just a bunch of poor, low-paid laborers
The MMO trope was historically "chinese gold farmers" but it sounds like NK drones were actually behind the botting and scripting economies.
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That's how most hacking works all over the world. A few actually clever people create tools and then a bunch of lower level people get to use them. Using them is boring, repetitive and sometimes risky, which is why the clever people don't do it.
It's the same everywhere. Indian tech support scammers, 4chan DDOS mobs, the NSA/GCHQ, all work that way.
pussies (Score:2, Interesting)
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Right, the norks started their nuke program only after orange man. Keep trying.
Classic case of ignoring the obvious failures in both repub and democrat admins. But please do tell us why one is better than the other. Clearly we have never heard this before.
I will never be convinced that one party is better than the other, or more moral, or more just, or more deserving of my vote. I have seen too much to be swayed by weak arguments that favor party over principle.
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We've been at war with North Korea longer than I've been alive and I'm over a half century old. Now they have nuclear weapons. Who the fuck is in charge here?
China
Limited internet in North Korea (Score:1)
2 Billion, not too shabby, for a bit player (Score:1)
But it's still pocket change. How much are the Ukrainians pulling down?
Every Bitcoin is a Terrorist Bullet (Score:1)
Be advised, bitcoin is not a warm and fuzzy currency, it is directly funding this and other terrorist programs.
Use cash, not bits.
Proof? (Score:4, Insightful)
So William Barr is happy now: Backdoors worked (Score:2)
mod parent up [nt] (Score:1)
Building (Score:1, Troll)
You know they have got to be building out a massive arsenal while our prezzo is coddling their leader giving him cross-border BJs. They already finished their testing so now they are buying time.
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You know they have got to be building out a massive arsenal while our prezzo is coddling their leader giving him cross-border BJs. They already finished their testing so now they are buying time.
LMFAO
Read Tim Shorrock (Score:2)
His expertise on North Korea is much more valuable than the constant feed of 'evil North Korea' items we're being fed.