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A Growing Army of Hackers Helps Keep Kim Jong Un in Power (bloomberg.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the state-of-play dept.
Kim Jong Un marked a decade as supreme leader of North Korea in December. Whether he can hold on to power for another 10 years may depend on state hackers, whose cybercrimes finance his nuclear arms program and prop up the economy. From a report: According to the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, North Korea's state-backed "malicious cyberactivities" target banks around the world, steal defense secrets, extort money through ransomware, hijack digitally mined currency, and launder ill-gotten gains through cryptocurrency exchanges. Kim's regime has already taken in as much as $2.3 billion through cybercrimes and is geared to rake in even more, U.S. and United Nations investigators have said. The cybercrimes have provided a lifeline for the struggling North Korean economy, which has been hobbled by sanctions. Kim has shown little interest in returning to negotiations that could lead to a lifting of sanctions if North Korea winds down its nuclear arms program.

Money from cybercrimes represents about 8% of North Korea's estimated economy in 2020, which is smaller than when Kim took power, according to the Bank of Korea in Seoul. (The bank for years has provided the best available accounting on the economic activity of the secretive state.) Kim's decision to shut borders because of Covid-19 suspended the little legal trade North Korea had and helped send the economy into its biggest contraction in more than two decades. Kim's regime has two means of evading global sanctions, which were imposed to punish it for nuclear and ballistic missile tests. One is the ship-to-ship transfer of commodities such as coal: A North Korean vessel will shift its cargo to another vessel, or the other way around, and both vessels typically try to cloak their identity. The other is the cyberarmy. Its documented cybercrimes include attempts to steal $2 billion from the Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system of financial transactions. North Korea has also illegally accessed military technology that could be used for financial gain, according to a UN Security Council panel charged with investigating sanctions-dodging by the government.
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A Growing Army of Hackers Helps Keep Kim Jong Un in Power More

A Growing Army of Hackers Helps Keep Kim Jong Un in Power

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  • Nice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pele ( 151312 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2021 @03:21PM (#62106837) Homepage

    Interesting how UN "reports" that play to our tune, like "north korean dictator kept in power by cybercrime" and "putin out to destroy whatever" are taken REALLY seriously, yet UN reports and findings of abuse of power and unlawful detention of people like Assange (I hate his guts, btw) are dismissed as "by incompetent people".

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      For the sake of argument, even if Assange was mistreated by the West, two wrongs don't make a right. Both sides have jerks.

    • Interesting how UN "reports" that play to our tune, like "north korean dictator kept in power by cybercrime" and "putin out to destroy whatever" are taken REALLY seriously,

      As they should be. You may dismiss it but these are very dangerous people.

      yet UN reports and findings of abuse of power and unlawful detention of people [...] are dismissed as "by incompetent people".

      A) This is not a POV I've read.
      B) These two things are very different. One is about global security and the other is human rights. Businesses tend to not care about human rights but they do care about market instability.

      • Aren't "human rights" in the global un declaration on human rights above all other rights, including "markets rights" and "security rights"?

  • The West has way more people and more computers, so why can't we fight back and out cyber-punch that puny nation, bleeping up their systems and infrastructure? We spend hundreds of billions on nuclear missiles, yet under-spend on something that doesn't require silos, rockets, explosions, nor moving parts. Time for a Manhattan-like project instead of itty bitty committees. Similar for Russia.

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jythie ( 914043 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2021 @03:26PM (#62106871)
      I think at the end of the day, this is a way wealthy western nations are vulnerable, but DPRK is not. They are not as dependent on such systems as the west, and their economy is not tied up in them.. there just isn't that much to attack and not much to gain.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        So it's comparable to sending a $30 million missile to blow up a dude on a camel?

      • Well, the OP says just that - they depends on the money they steal by hacking. Would it be so hard to just steal it back?
        And don't forget to do it and DENY IT ALL until the end of times. Works for NK themselves, works for Russia, works for China, why won't it work for US and west in general?

    • Sure we could hack them. But it's kinda like ICBM's - there is only offense, no very effective defense. So hacking becomes a bit of an equalizer for weak nations.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by JBeretta ( 7487512 )

        Sure we could hack them. But it's kinda like ICBM's - there is only offense, no very effective defense. So hacking becomes a bit of an equalizer for weak nations.

        Oh yeah? Why don't we just black-hole their entire IP space? Cut them off from the rest of the internet. Or sever their fiber optic cables OUTSIDE of their borders? Can't fix what you can't reach.

        Good luck hacking the rest of us, when you have nothing more than a large LAN.

    • Asymmetrical warfare has existed for a long time. North Korea does a better job of destroying themselves than we ever could and there's little we could really do to hurt them. How much worse can you make life for a citizen living in a totalitarian hellhole?

      I once read an account of a person who defected from North Korea. He'd of course been fully indoctrinated about how the rest of the world was evil, but said what made him realize it was all bullshit was when a South Korean border guard had casually dis

      • but said what made him realize it was all bullshit was when a South Korean border guard had casually discarded something which he said no one in the North would have done.

        I believe it was a pair of nail clippers, something that costs next to nothing for most of us.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        There is a story that one US President, who I shall not name, said, "How about we bomb NK back to the stone age!", and the General replied, "Sir, most are already there."

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Eh, it is a bit questionable how much of that was them doing it to themselves. They were on a pretty good path for quite a few decades, but years of sanctions will tank pretty much any economy. Hell, if you cut the US off from the world economy we would probably look like DPRK in about 50 years.
  • He needs to be careful, as more people work on this, they find out more about the world outside NK. That may lead to the trusted individuals to seek more of what they see.
  • Why the free world puts up with this shit. Hit back, hit hard, and keep hitting. Block as much of their access to the Internet as possible (and most of China as well FFS since they are enabling this behavior).

    • Sanctions just screw the citizens of N. Korea, who are already in an unhappy state. The whole problem is that you can't just bomb the bastards, because they have nukes. Kim Jong-Un appears to know what he is doing in that respect. He also appears to have no concern for the people he rules. They serve his rule. The people of N. Korea have no chance of rising up against their oppressors, given the massive N. Korean army.

      • The problem up to now has not been the nukes since they didn't have very many and didn't have the means of delivering them at a distance. The problem is actually conventional artillery. North Korea has a great deal of artillery close to the border, hidden and fortified. Seoul is only 55km from the border, within range of this artillery. Long before South Korea or the UN forces could neutralize the North Korean artillery, North Korea could destroy Seoul and kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of peopl

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      'hitting back hard' is how we got into this mess in the first place. This whole 'if we hurt them enough they will give up and we win!' plays really well to domestic audiences, but is a failure as foreign policy

  • If this is true, and I am always at least a little skeptical about reports relating to the acts of the evil dictators of N.Korea, one must ask the question: Why the hell is N.Korea still connected to the Internet?

    Surely it would be a simple task to simply "disconnect" and thus leave them with nobody to hack from the safety of their sovereign territory.

  • Bloomberg article that references other Bloomberg articles for "proof"? This is nothing but a garbage article that is rife with speculation.
  • Why hire an army of hackers to make $2.3B? Wouldn't it be much easier just to pump and dump bitcoin?
  • They bring no value to the digital world, just cut them off completely.

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