Iran and North Korea Team Up To Fight State-Sponsored Malware 191
An anonymous reader writes, quoting the article: "At the start of this month, news broke that Iran and North Korea have strengthened their ties, specifically by signing a number of cooperation agreements on science and technology. The two states signed the pact on Saturday, declaring that it represented a united front against Western powers. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, told Kim Yong Nam, North Korea's ceremonial head of state, the two countries have common enemies and aligned goals. On Monday, security firm F-Secure weighed in on the discussion. The company believes Iran and North Korea may be interested in collaborating against government-sponsored malware attacks such as Duqu, Flame, and Stuxnet."
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a very bad thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh, the Irony (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing that was an unintended consequence of those malware programs. Unless there's an advantage I don't see with Iran and North Korea strengthening ties.
The military-industrial complex needs enemies. I'm on the edges of the "cybersecurity" business and its been apparent for years now that there is a huge push to play up the risks with respect to national security because there are Cosmos-level contracting dollars at stake (i.e. billions and billions). This sort of escalation perfectly feeds that narrative.
Stuxnet is going to pay huge dividends for the company that wrote it, not because of the success in Iran, but because of the massive funding for the coming "cyberwar" that stuxnet provoked - imaginary or otherwise.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unintended, but hardly unforeseeable, so why would there be mudslinging? Any sort of broad-based sanction will likely lead to increased ties between people who can't do business anywhere else. National self interest is an older game than you seem to think.
Re:This is a very bad thing (Score:1, Insightful)
This is not similar - at all - to the Axis. The Axis were the attackers, whereas the Best Korea and Iran are defending. There's nothing wrong with forming an alliance to defend against a common enemy, and defending from computer threats should worry no one (well, no one but the malware writers, anyway).
What really surprises me is that the Best Korea has computers. I always thought the Great Leader himself did all the computation on his head and telepathically sent the output to trillions of Best Koreans.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Republicans will say Obama, some how caused North Korea and Iran to hop into bed, and forget to mention that they would of followed the exact same policies or done worse and got us into another unfunded pointless war in the middle east.
I'm not sure if there will be any mud slinging about this before the election as I doubt the republicans want to draw attention to foreign affairs after Romney's rather terrible overseas trip and the fact his ticket has no foreign policy experience at all but still I can see it happen.
the military industrial complex is evil (Score:5, Insightful)
but this does not mean that enemies are just made up hoaxes
the venom from north korea and iran is real. just ask a japanese, or a syrian
this is where you lecture me on how these are peace loving harmless countries that have been turned into monsters, just to slake a thirst to spend money by an industrial complex in the usa
you know, there are actually real breathing human beings in north korea and iran who think and have their own ideas, completely of their own will and independent volition. some of their ideas come from concepts they dearly believe that are older than the united states' existence. not just cardboard cut out reflections of some western propaganda from decades ago from a dead cold war era. maybe you should conceptionalize the fantasty that there exists real people outside the usa with their own agenda that did not start in washington dc
some of them have agendas that carry some malice for peace on this earth, not just malice for the economies of the west. what they believe and think is their own original creation, and may require defeat on a battlefield
i say that not because i love drinking oil from the skulls of dead children, or whatever nonsense you believe about someone like myself who would say such a thing, but because i understand, unlike you, that menace does not only flow from one place in the world, and the usa is not the only country with a military industrial complex
in fact, if you want to see the most complete representation of the idea of a military industrial complex controlling a country in all avenues of power, try pyongyang. tehran, not so much, but the revolutionary guard there is trying its best to defang the mullahs and be more of a direct military industrial complex dominating a country, just like pyongyang
so if you oppose the idea of the military industrial complex, you oppose north korea. unless your supposed principles are not so much real principles, just a thin veneer for the same old tired tribalism of hating a country or nationality such as the usa just out of the same old tired empty chest thumping avarice you believe you are above somehow?
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure if there will be any mud slinging about this before the election as I doubt the republicans want to draw attention to foreign affairs after Romney's rather terrible overseas trip and the fact his ticket has no foreign policy experience at all but still I can see it happen.
I on the other hand hope there's lots of mudslinging. There's no more truth or objectivity in placid campaigns than enraged ones. And the latter have a lot more spirit and engagement to them. Politeness is vastly overrated in politics anyway.
And "Romney's rather terrible overseas trip"? Ignoring that that's an awfully weak talking point, how is that worse than the typical Obama overseas trip? At least, he hasn't tried to insult his hosts or murmured the exact same platitudes to numerous different host countries.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, same shit as always, but now with much lower body counts?
Depends on how you measure "body count" - if it takes death by kinetic weapon to qualify, then sure. If it means slow deaths, like losing 10 years off a person's lifespan due to poor medical care, malnutrition, environmental pollution or whatever because resources were poorly allocated then no.
Furthermore, just as tasers seem to encourage misuse because of their advertised non-lethality, we stand a good chance of finding escalation of international conflict because of the less-obvious lethality of this sort of engagement.
Bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
What are they possibly going to do? They are outgunned in every respect - technologically, economically, and militarily by everyone who won't put up with their shit. Pre-WWII Germany had built itself back up to a manufacturing and academic (well, before they chased out the jewish PhDs) powerhouse. Meanwhile we've got the Mullahs afraid that people might actually learn things while at university and a North Korean populace that is reduced to eating grass every 10 years or so. Comparing Iran and North Korea to pre-war Nazi Germany doesn't even pass the belly laugh test.
Did you even see the ludicrous North Korean attempt at a supposed satellite launch? What about the photoshopped missile launch test from Iran?
Compare and contrast to the years between WWII and Yeltsin shelling Parliament when I would see maps in the Providence Journal of what would happen if a nuclear warhead detonated over Quonset Point Naval Air Station - an actual, credible, threat. That's what gets me about this "war on terrorism" and "axis of evil" bullshit which chews up trillions of dollars and ruins soldiers' lives for few actual results over imaginary threats to the US. We're supposed to soil our underwear over some technologically backwards regimes who don't even have actual long-range missiles and their medium range missiles leave much to be desired?
You want cyberwar? How about "accidentally" "dragging an anchor" over an undersea cable in the Persian Gulf or off the coast of North Korea? Because that's what our response is going to be if Iran and North Korea become offensive with malware botnets and they can do fuck-all about it. It's not like it hasn't happened before.
Threat? Please.
What fucking threat?
The people playing up this "threat" of Iran and North Korea are a bunch of pants-wetters and chickenhawks with only one thing in mind - making money off the unjustified fear and advancing the ideologies of PNAC and FPI banging the drums for boots-on-the-ground war with Iran and probably NK. Dan Senor isn't exactly a "potted plant" to take a term from Ollie North's lawyer.
Oh yeah, and guess who Dan Senor works for?
--
BMO
Ask Japanese about Korea?? (Score:5, Insightful)
the venom from north korea and iran is real. just ask a japanese ....
Say what??
Ask Japanese about the Koreans?
For Your Information, it was the Japanese who invaded Korea multiple times throughout history
Not the other way around
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they did a little bit...
Iranian_Revolution#Historical_background [wikipedia.org]
Korean_War#Factors_in_U.S._intervention [wikipedia.org]