Search Results for: hacking

December 8, 2014

N. Korea: We didn’t hack Sony, but we’re glad someone did

As suspicions grow that North Korea was indeed responsible for the Sony hack, North Korea offers that oddly unconvincing denial. If the North Koreans really did do it, some commenters think the U.S. will have to respond: Aitel says the hacks are potentially “a ‘near red-line moment’” because they represent the kind of incident that would almost require a US policy response assuming a rival state was behind it. As Aitel says, “This is the first demonstration of what the military would call...

Categories Books & Films/Censorship/China & Korea
December 2, 2014

Sony Pictures should go after North Korean hackers’ Chinese enablers

Since the weekend, several of you have e-mailed me about “suspicions” – and really, I don’t think they went further than that – that and leaked unreleased movies to file sharers to punish it for “The Interview.” Those rumors were covered by many outlets, but frankly, the open-source evidence for North Korea’s complicity was little more than speculation, at least until I read this today: Hackers who knocked Sony Pictures Entertainment’s computer systems offline last week used tools very similar...

Categories Books & Films/Censorship/China & Korea
July 31, 2014

Refugees, geeks to join forces at “Hack North Korea”

The Human Rights Foundation, “a New York-based group that focuses on closed societies,” will host a two-day “hackathon” this coming weekend to “harness the technical prowess of Silicon Valley to come up with new ways to get information safely into North Korea.” The event’s title is “Hack North Korea.” Several prominent North Korean defectors will attend the event including pro-democracy activist Park Sang-hak, former North Korean child prisoner Kang Chol-hwan, media personality Park Yeon-mi and Kim Heung-Kwang, a former professor...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Subversion
July 23, 2014

APG needs N. Korea like the Vienna Boys’ Choir needs Jerry Sandusky

The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering describes itself as “an autonomous and collaborative international organisation … consisting of 41 members and a number of international and regional observers [who] are committed to the effective implementation and enforcement of internationally accepted standards against money laundering and the financing of terrorism, in particular the Forty Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF).” APG has an Associate Membership in FATF, the world’s primary international organization dedicated to fighting money...

Categories Money Laundering
February 6, 2014

In South Korea, a political realignment

When President Park speaks of reunification as a “jackpot,” she is seizing an issue that the left had “owned” for at least a dozen years. Ten years ago, the left could draw crowds of candle-carrying thirty-somethings to swoon about reunification, at least in the abstract. The dream was qualified, complicated, and hopelessly unrealistic, but it intoxicated them. The DMZ would have become a “peace park,”* the disputed waters of the Yellow Sea would have become a “peace zone,” and both...

Categories Censorship/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
September 14, 2013

Open Sources, September 14, 2013

~          1          ~ MADE IN NORTH KOREA: NK News has done us a service by identifying a factory in North Korea that’s making Land’s End clothing, which the Chinese subcontractor then sells as “Made in China.” I suspect there’s more of this going on than we know. Land’s End ought to terminate all relationships with the Chinese supplier.  If it doesn’t, it implies tolerance of illegal violations of North Korea sanctions, and immoral exploitation...

Categories Anju Links
September 3, 2013

Camp 22 Update

In an update to its previous imagery analysis, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea seems to be migrating to the view that Camp 22 was closed in 2012, but if that’s the answer, the next question it raises is what happened to the prisoners there, once estimated to number as high as 30,000. The Washington Post asks that question in an editorial today: In a way, the camp was a city in its own right, albeit a locus of inhumanity rather...

Categories "United" Nations/The Camps
August 29, 2013

Open Sources, Aug. 29, 2013

CALL ME OLD FASHIONED–it’s fine, really, I’m used to it–but I fail to see what’s so hard-line about the idea, most recently advanced by John McCain, that restarting six-party talks ought to be contingent on North Korea demonstrating its seriousness about disarming, such as by beginning to disarm. That’s pretty much the same view the Obama Administration had stated publicly, although it seems necessary to clarify it when North Korea has, more times than I could count, said it will never give up its nukes, when...

Categories Anju Links
August 12, 2013

The Daily NK: Keeping the promises that the Sunshine Policy couldn’t

In a land of scarcity, North Korea’s scarcest commodity is truth, and it is truth that is transforming North Korea.  In the last ten years, North Korea’s death-grip on the flow of food, consumer goods, and information across its borders was fractured, and probably for good.  This change is enormously consequential to how we ought to approach North Korea.  Even as inter-governmental “Sunshine” and engagement failed decisively–and probably exacerbated North Korea’s brutality–market-based engagement and information flows have been profoundly transformative....

Categories Activism/Media Criticism
January 24, 2013

Open Sources, Jan. 24, 2013

I MAY HAVE A MORE COMPLETE REACTION TO UNSCR 2087 after I’ve had more time to read it and work through its provisions, but I’m not yet ready to accept the spin that this tightened sanctions on North Korea.  Frankly, I’m worried that it actually gives China a basis to argue that it narrowed the sweep of 1718’s financial provisions — the ones with the most potential to be effective, if enforced.  Not that any U.N. resolution matters if China...

Categories Anju Links
July 20, 2012

Open Sources, July 20, 2012

WELCOME BACK, SOUTH KOREA: Readers in South Korea and my visitors’ log tell me the site is now accessible from the ROK. With the assistance of my ISP and faithful reader, we traced the problem down to a bad node at Korea Telecom. KT actually sent a report back to my reader in English, and here’s where it gets interesting: After reviewing your request , we found that your requested IP address was blocked by our team member according to...

Categories Anju Links
January 30, 2012

North Korea shipped chemical reagents to Syria, possibly via China

This is a little old now, but I haven’t seen anyone else talking about it, so I will. The U.N. has launched an investigation into an attempted shipment of chemical weapons reagents and protective suits to Syria, a close ally of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and whose government gave safe passage to recruits on their way to Iraq to join Al Qaeda forces there. In November 2009, Greek authorities seized a container from a Liberia-registered freighter as it headed toward...

Categories Axis of Evil/China/Proliferation/Taiwan/WMD
January 11, 2011

Open Sources

China’s best efforts notwithstanding, North Korea’s total foreign trade fell by 10% between 2008 and 2009. It gives some cause for hope that China can’t completely undermine the effect of international and U.S. Treasury sanctions, although those only really came into force in 2009 and 2010, respectively. My best guess is that this drop can mostly be attributed to reduced trade with South Korea. Hat tip: James again. _____________________________ North Korean missiles a direct threat to the United States? Well,...

Categories Anju Links
July 11, 2009

ROK Intel Blames N. Korea for DDOS Attacks, But You Already Knew That

This, from the now-familiar ROK Intel Leak Ticker — unnamed members or staffers from the intelligence committee of the South Korean National Assembly, quoting unnamed members of the National Intelligence Service: A North Korean army lab of hackers was ordered to “destroy” South Korean communications networks — evidence the isolated regime was behind cyberattacks that paralyzed South Korean and American Web sites — news reports said Saturday, citing an intelligence briefing. Members of the parliamentary intelligence committee have said in...

Categories Korean Politics/NK Military/Technology
December 4, 2008

Leaflets Balloons Prove Effective as Weapons of Economic, Political Warfare

It shows you the woeful condition of modern South Korea that some would show up to defend slavery and oppression from the non-violent propagation of truth to the oppressed. I can understand why, to a man whose life has been stolen from him by that oppression, that proved to me more than he could bear. This is the point at which things ceased to be non-violent: Here, encapsulated in one incident, is the ugly future of reunification. And the longer...

Categories Deprogramming/The Fifth Column
June 2, 2005

Big Brother Is Watching You

From the Chosun Ilbo: A defense expert warned Thursday that North Korea’s small army of computer hackers has capacity equal that of the U.S. CIA. He said North Korea also operates some 39 bugging and surveillance posts from where it eavesdrops on communication and signals from all across South Korea. . . . . In a lecture on Defense Ministry responses to information warfare, Byeon said, “Simulations on North Korea’s information warfare capabilities reveal that Pyongyang could damage the command...

Categories Uncategorized
June 2, 2005

Big Brother Is Watching You

From the Chosun Ilbo: A defense expert warned Thursday that North Korea’s small army of computer hackers has capacity equal that of the U.S. CIA. He said North Korea also operates some 39 bugging and surveillance posts from where it eavesdrops on communication and signals from all across South Korea. . . . . In a lecture on Defense Ministry responses to information warfare, Byeon said, “Simulations on North Korea’s information warfare capabilities reveal that Pyongyang could damage the command...

Categories Uncategorized
June 16, 2004

Iraq and 9/11

I realize that I have been letting this blog go off-subject of late, but I can’t resist digging into The Big Headline from the 9/11 Commission–there is no link between Saddam and 9/11. The smarmily worded first paragraph of the NYT story begins, “Bluntly contradicting the Bush administration, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported Wednesday there was ‘no credible evidence’ that Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaida target the United States.” All of this raises more questions than it answers...

Categories Uncategorized