Search Results for “cyber attacks”

March 13, 2015

Good engagement: BBC, in a reversal, decides to broadcast to North Korea (Update: Did the Telegraph get it wrong?)

Congratulations to EAHRNK, Lord Alton, and Youngchan Justin Choi, another of the young Korean-American over-achievers who may already have had an impact beyond his years on the history of his ancestral homeland. Here’s another link to Choi’s pages on Twitter and Facebook, if you wish to add your congratulations to mine. (I’m sure I’ve omitted many names of those who pushed for this, so feel free to add others in the comments.) It now looks like the Beeb is going to launch a North Korea...

Propaganda/Subversion

February 4, 2015

President Obama can’t explain what his N. Korea executive order does

The bottom North Korea story of the day is that Pyongyang, which denies having anything to do with the Sony cyberattacks, has just threatened us with cyberattacks. The North’s military will ratchet up its “retaliatory action of justice” by use of every possible means, including the nation’s “smaller, precision and diversified” nuclear striking means and cyber warfare capabilities, it added. [Yonhap] (I’m taking Yonhap’s word for this, because KCNA isn’t working for me today.) The top North Korea story of...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks

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 8, 2015

FBI Director: Yes, I’m sure North Korea did it. (Update: So is NSA’s Director)

The other day, a reporter asked me whether the “considerable doubt” about Pyongyang’s responsibility for the Sony hacks and terror threats undermined the legitimacy of the President’s response. I suppose the answer depends on your perspective. I’m not privy to the FBI’s evidence against North Korea, but my greater doubt is whether the President’s response, so far, is meaningful. A week ago, however, I decided that the FBI was losing the battle for public opinion. I recalled the CIA’s video...

Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)

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 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 22, 2014

What re-listing N. Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism would mean

The New York Times is reporting that President Obama is considering re-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism: As the United States moves closer to taking Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, President Obama said he would “review” whether to return North Korea to the list, part of a broader government response to a damaging cyberattack on Sony’s Hollywood studio. “We have got very clear criteria as to what it means for a state to sponsor...

Sanctions/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

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...

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...

Books & Films/Censorship/China & Korea

May 7, 2014

China leaks contingency plan for N. Korea collapse

Last week, North Korea unexpectedly announced that Hwang Pyong So had replaced Choe Ryong-Hae as North Korea’s top military officer and number two official. Choe had held this status since the December purge of Jang Song-Thaek. It may be a complete coincidence that Kyodo News has since reported on allegedly leaked contingency plans by the Chinese Army to seal the border and protect North Korean officials from, shall we say, summarized judicial proceedings in the event of a collapse of...

China & Korea

April 29, 2014

Just test the damn thing already.

So the news this week is that the Obama Administration, which for the last five years has stayed its hand from sanctioning North Korea because of Chinese sensitivities, has just blocked the assets of top members of Vladimir Putin’s government over their seizure of the Crimea. That sounds like an effective way to piss them off, but I can’t see how it poses a serious threat to Russia’s economy or Putin’s domestic support, or how it will deter his next...

Sanctions/U.S. & Korea/WMD

October 17, 2013

Open Sources, October 17, 2013

PEACE IN OUR TIME, Part 1: South Korea says that the North is ready for another nuke test any old time, and reveals that at the height of Sunshine and Agreed Framework II, the North was building missile silos: Several South Korean government sources confirmed yesterday that the North has numerous underground missile launch facilities around 2,000 meters (2,190 yards) south of Mount Paektu. The silos, they said, were constructed in the mid-2000s and were determined to have been completed...

Anju Links

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...