Search Results for “hacking”

October 7, 2015

Sens. Gardner, Rubio & Risch to introduce new North Korea sanctions bill (updated)

The new bill was revealed in this column by Josh Rogin, and includes a link to the full text. The bill, which still has no number, will be the Senate’s second version of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, following the introduction by Senators Menendez and Graham of S. 1747 in July. Both bills follow the lead of Ed Royce and Elliot Engel, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who introduced H.R. 757 in January. H.R. 757,...

Anju Links/Sanctions

September 11, 2015

60 Minutes on the Sony Cyberattack: There is no defense, only deterrence

CBS has published video of a Sixty Minutes segment on North Korea’s 2014 cyberattack on Sony, hosted by correspondent Steve Kroft. View More: Newsmakers News|60 Minutes News|Live News|More News Videos The conspiracy theories of a few pro-Pyongyang gasbags and assorted cranks notwithstanding, the President, the Directors of the FBI and the NSA, and our country’s best technical experts agree that Pyongyang did it. I’m certainly no technical expert myself, but I don’t have to look back from the moon to...

Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)

May 22, 2015

“Arsenal of Terror,” 2d ed.: N. Korea paid dope dealers $40K to kill Hwang Jang Yop

South Korean prosecutors have indicted three South Korean nationals, identified only by the surnames “Bang,” “Kim,” and “Hwang,” for “bringing in methamphetamine from North Korea and attempting to assassinate” Hwang Jang-Yop, North Korea’s highest-ranking defector until his death in 2010. Let’s unpack these two criminal conspiracies one at a time, starting with the meth: The 69-year-old, identified only by his family name Bang, and two others have been detained for producing 70 kilograms of methamphetamine at a North Korean factory...

Drugs & N Korea/Terrorism (NK)

May 5, 2015

Contradiction isn’t argument: A response to Doug Bandow on N. Korea and terrorism

In the years after my return from four years with the Army in Korea, I found much to agree with in Doug Bandow’s writing — up to a point. Bandow is best known — at least in the context of Korea — for arguing that South Korea can and should pay for its own defense, and that U.S. Forces Korea should withdraw. A supporter of the isolationist and semi-retired cult figure, Ron Paul, Bandow favors the withdrawal of all 28,500 U.S. military personnel from South Korea. But...

Terrorism (NK)

April 14, 2015

60 Minutes on the Sony attacks

Gone were the inside-job theories, except that one expert, when asked, allows the bare possibility that an insider might have made the North Koreans’ work easier. Like the heads of the FBI and the NSA, all the experts 60 Minutes interviewed are convinced that North Korea was behind the attack. Worse, the attack itself was not all that sophisticated, when compared to what the U.S. and other governments are capable of today. An equally unsophisticated attack would have taken out...

Cyberwar

March 26, 2015

Kim Jong Un’s censorship knows no limits or borders. To submit to it is to forfeit freedom.

If Kim Jong Un is weighing whether to answer leaflets from South Korea with artillery, it won’t discourage him that many on South Korea’s illiberal left have already begun to excuse him for it. Within this confused, transpatriated constituency, there is much “anxiety” lately about “inter-Korean tensions.” Those tensions have risen since North Korea has begun threatening to shell the North Korean defectors who send leaflets critical of Kim’s misrule across the DMZ. But then, any rational mind can see...

Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Propaganda/Subversion/Terrorism (NK)

March 23, 2015

How Barack Obama let Kim Jong Un get away with censoring and terrorizing America (updated)

Last December, after the FBI and the National Security Agency concluded that North Korea’s Unit 121 had hacked Sony Pictures and threatened the Americans who wanted to see “The Interview,” President Obama publicly accused North Korea of the cyberattack and threat, and promised a “proportional response” to it. On January 2nd, the President signed a new executive order whose potential was sweeping, but whose actual effect was “symbolic at best.” In practice, the designations under the new executive order amounted...

Censorship/Cyberwar/Democracy/Terrorism (NK)

March 20, 2015

Investigators: N. Korean hackers tried to cause reactor malfunction

Earlier this week, I posted on South Korean investigators’ conclusion that North Korea was behind the hacking of several South Korean nuclear power plants, but that the attacks caused no operational impact. Evidently, that wasn’t for lack of effort: The team of South Koreans investigating the incident says the hackers tried to cause a malfunction at the reactors, which supply around 30% of the country’s electricity, but failed to break through the control systems. [Sky News] See also this report from...

Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)

January 29, 2015

Does the State Department think there’s a six-month statute of limitations for terror sponsorship? (Updated)

If the Congressional Research Service had its own store at the mall, you’d often find me there at 3 a.m., sleeping in my lawn chair the night before the next release, possibly in some sort of costume. The researchers are smart and genial people, and most of their work has been terrific. There also appears to be some mutuality of readership between us, because as it turns out, the latest CRS report on North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism cites no less than three of...

Terrorism (NK)

January 23, 2015

Three Cheers for Obama’s Sony attribution, a golf clap for his “proportional” response.

In The Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima describes how Sony’s decision to cancel the premiere of The Interview catalyzed the Obama Administration’s decision to blame North Korea publicly: The next day, alarmed by the surrender, President Barack Obama convened his top officials in the White House Situation Room and, based on their unanimous recommendation, decided to take an action the United States had never dared before in response to a cyberattack by another nation: name the government responsible and punish it....

Anju Links/Cyberwar/Russia/Sanctions

January 16, 2015

Actually, sanctions are looking like the best thing that ever happened to engagement

Since December 19th, when the President blamed North Korea for the Sony hacking and cyberterrorism attacks, Congress has been pushing for tougher sanctions against North Korea, and it has looked increasingly like it has been pushing against an open door. And suddenly, a North Korean leader who has never gone abroad or met a foreign leader during his three-year reign (no, Rodman doesn’t count) has taken a sudden — even urgent — interest in personal diplomacy. On January 1, Kim Jong Un made a highly...

Diplomacy/Sanctions

January 13, 2015

House Foreign Affairs Committee holds briefing; members demand tougher sanctions on N. Korea, China (updated with video of full hearing)

The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a briefing on North Korea and the Sony hack today. Three witnesses appeared: The Honorable Sung Kim Special Representative for North Korea Policy and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Korea and Japan U.S. Department of State [full text of statement] The Honorable Daniel Glaser Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence U.S. Department of the Treasury [full text of statement] Brigadier General Gregory J. Touhill, USAF, Retired Deputy Assistant Secretary for...

Anju Links

December 29, 2014

Christine Hong has been curiously silent about North Korea’s racism

By now, most of you have probably read that North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, referring to President Obama’s failure to censor “The Interview,” said that “Obama Reckless always in words and Deeds Goes like a Monkey in a Tropical Forest.” (KCNA.kp is unlinkable, but I’ve pasted the full article below the fold. The article in question is dated December 27, 2014.) This is the third racist attack on President Obama KCNA has printed, and the second it has printed...

Racism/Useful Idiocy

December 23, 2014

China to Obama: Drop dead

The best news I’ve heard today is that Sony Pictures has either grown a pair or decided that it would rather wilt under domestic political pressure than wilt under foreign terrorist pressure. That means that some theaters will be showing The Interview on Christmas after all. I won’t stand in line to see it, but when it comes to my neighborhood, I’m taking my son (my daughter might not be old enough). Fortunately, this sounds like exactly the kind of...

Anju Links/Censorship/China/Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)

December 23, 2014

White House considers sanctions, psyops, and cyber responses to N. Korea

Because I’ve begun to develop a certain sense of when interesting events are about to get much more interesting, yesterday morning, I decided to check the web site of KCNA, North Korea’s official “news” service. The site did not load, but it has always been slow to load. Then, news sites began to report that North Korea’s internet access had gone down, and that the White House wasn’t denying that it had a hand in this. This morning, kcna.kp loaded...

Cyberwar/Propaganda/Sanctions/Subversion

December 22, 2014

N. Korea: Stop accusing us of terrorism, or else!

There is something strangely unconvincing about North Korea’s denial that it hacked Sony Pictures or threatened “9/11 style” attacks on theaters: North Korea rejected the notion that it would attack “innocent moviegoers.” “We will not tolerate the people who are willing to insult our supreme leader, but even when we retaliate, we will not conduct terror against innocent moviegoers,” KCNA said. “The retaliation will target the ones who are responsible and the originators of the insults. Our army has the...

Censorship/Terrorism (NK)

December 20, 2014

We are all North Koreans now

As far as I know, I didn’t liberate a single North Korean during my four-year tour with the Army in South Korea, although I’ve argued their distant and forgotten cause ever since I came home. The crimes of Kim Jong Un were still distant just five weeks ago, when Professor Lee and I, writing in The New York Times, sounded a lonely warning about Kim’s efforts to censor his critics in the South with terror and violence, writing that “[c]aving...

Censorship/Human Rights/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law

December 18, 2014

If N. Korea hacked Sony and threatened us, here’s how we should respond

The New York Times, quoting “[s]enior administration officials,” is reporting that “American officials have concluded that North Korea ordered the attacks on Sony Pictures’s computers.” Senior administration officials, who would not speak on the record about the intelligence findings, said the White House was debating whether to publicly accuse North Korea of what amounts to a cyberterrorism attack. Sony capitulated after the hackers threatened additional attacks, perhaps on theaters themselves, if the movie, “The Interview,” was released. [N.Y. Times] The...

Books & Films/Censorship/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Law

Search Results for: hacking