Codebusters
Despite the recent allegations that the Russians were attempting to corrupt voting software at a specific company (and failed), they are not the world’s best hackers or cyber attackers, at all.
No, that dubious honor belongs entirely to the Norks. Per the article in Foreign Policy’s most recent edition, you barely even need a computer to do what the Norks do to get what they want. http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/05/north-korea-proves-you-barely-need-computers-to-win-a-cyberwar/
To quote the authors (Moore and Corrado) of that article: “Evidence is mounting that the perpetrator of last month’s WannaCry cyberattack that paralyzed 300,000 computers in 150 countries was North Korea’s hacker army, a highly sophisticated network of hackers trained to compromise foreign militaries, corrupt network systems, and conduct cyberheists of financial institutions. It may seem strange that a country as underdeveloped as North Korea has decided to invest its meager resources in such high-tech capabilities. It shouldn’t. Cyberspace has long been North Korea’s preferred battlefield precisely because of its own developmental weaknesses.”
They go on to say that Norkiland uses the Chinese method of finding the best candidates to be hackers, termed ‘a thousand grains of sand’. This was also the Soviet method for winning in Olympic sports.
In 1986, North Korea hired 25 Russian instructors in cybernetics (computer science, to the uninformed) and subsequently began identifying grade school-level children to train in fine art of hack attacks. There are at least 5,900 skilled cyber hackers working for the Nork government on nothing else.
Norkiland is also the prime suspect in the recent theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City.
They are, in fact, suspects in such things as a 2003 major power outage in the US, and may even be the source of the fake FBI Moneypak ransomware virus which hit a lot of people starting in 2012, including me. That virus cost me a pretty penny to have it removed from my computer, and yes, I did call the FBI and yell at them about it. They were quite humble and told me to report it, which I did. But it’s still going on, attacking Androids and other platforms. If the Norks were not behind it, I’d be surprised.
Per this Telegraph article, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-northkorea-exclusive-idUSKCN18H020 Norkiland is also the suspect in shutting down South Korea’s reactor in 2014. Of course, the Norks emphatically deny that.
There are apparently 11,000 domains with various forms of scareware and ransomware in existence, but if you have a small army of dedicated cyber pirates at your command in your very supremely ultra-secret Unit 180, the number of domains they have to monitor is less than two apiece.
The Norks are better at cyber and malware attacks than they are at arms and armor, although that is finding its feet. For this reason alone, my response to people who screech ‘the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!”** is ‘Look further east.’ The Norks are more likely to rule the world through their skilled cyber hackers than by missile attacks on their neighbors. If any country can hack the US voting system, it’s the Norks. If they can hack banks, they can also hack our defense system. If that doesn’t scare you, you’re numb to reality.
On a final note, I will add that since Fatty Kim da T’ird, aka NDtBF, has this fascination with things that go ‘BOOM!’, he may not view hack attacks as the best thing since sliced bread for his purposes.
He’s wrong. Things that go ‘BOOM!’ can backfire on you. He should heed what Daddy Kim did: use the back door. His neighbors and US have Bigger Booms than his.
**See the movie. It’s a hoot.
Category: North Korea
Hacking is likely more the style of NDtBF’s sister (assuming he hasn’t stuck her in front of a howitzer yet). NDtBF is too busy compensating for being a fat midget with a tiny dick.
Definitely not something to blow off, however, as even he might wise up. Or one of his peons could be more competent. Just because the boss is an ass doesn’t mean the staff aren’t smart enough to keep the place afloat, after all.
Anyone who says the Norks are responsible for the 2003 blackout don’t know WTF they’re talking about.
I would classify someone who could shut down your power grid from 10,000 miles away now as far more dangerous than someone who can launch a missile 500 miles with a potentially nuclear warhead in a few years.
Let’s say our entire power grid is shut down for only one month. Water and food are interrupted, reactors melt down – that’s just for openers. How many potential Chernobyls do we have if the cooling systems die?
Reactors melt down?
Dude, put the crack pipe on the ground and back away slowly.
I believe that our nuke techs are a whole lot better trained than the nuke guys at Chernobyl, and the nuke plants we have in operation are better protected, too.
The point of this was not that they can shut down the plant from a distance, but rather that they can interfere with the transmission of power on a grid, by invading the coding in the system that transmits it.
That possibility is much higher than a meltdown like Chernobyl.
I’d counter your question with how many people have gas-powered generators attached to their homes for emergencies? My house isn’t set up for it, but I could probably get it installed if I had to.
When there was a power outage in 2011, it affected 600,000 people on the same power grid as mine, because the storm that caused the outage hit the transmitter station. For some people in my area, the outage lasted three weeks because of the repairs needed.
How many people have a one-month supply of fuel? More importantly – how many utilities have both emergency generators and sufficient fuel for a month of even intermittent operation?
While I don’t have it (yet) I can have installed on my house a propane-powered generator with the capacity to power the entire house, the a/c, and the water well.
With a 200-gal propane tank that puppy will keep us healthy and happy for a lot longer than a full month.
Go pop a feral hog once every 2 weeks and we have meat enough for us and the grandkids. We know enough about the edible wild plants in our woods to keep healthy (even if some of the greens are not as tasty as kale).
Of course, this is all an example of the truth behind the Hank Jr. song “Country Folks Can Survive.”
Of course, the occasional hurricane gives us real-life refresher courses from time to time.
By ‘gas’, I did not mean gasoline-powered.
I meant natural gas, and generators can now be linked to a natural gas line if a house is linked to one.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear about that.
I suppose that building codes may interfere, but in the case where the infrastructure was compromised or rendered inoperative for a significant period of time, then the natural gas supply would be impacted as well.
Being in the county we can (must) rely on propane. A 200-gallon tank at about the price-per-gallon of gasoline can be used for a long time to power a full-house generator.
I can see some City Fathers in their Infinite Wisdom nixing a 200-gallon tank. But 20-gallon portable tanks are available. Or a stockpile of 5-gallon tanks for that matter.
Options.
And while I agree with all the above… note I said “how many people”. There are those who have taken precautions… but the majority of the country is helpless when the power goes out a few days. Weeks or months? And note the ‘prep if I want to’…but who really has? That ‘generator with a propane tank” is about $10,000… I would bet out of all the readers on this forum, maybe a handful have anything equivalent.
couldn’t resist checking… for even a 10kw generator with a 20 hp engine, a 200 gallon tank will run less than 30 hours. That is based on 75% load, you can stretch that a fair amount running no more than 50% load to maybe 45 hours. http://www.motorsnorkel.com/propane-consumption-rate
Me and most of my neighbors, for one. I’m no stranger to extended outages due to storms.
“Emergency, emergency! Everyone to get from street!
I was reading one of those preper sites a while back, and they were saying that if you are not a preper, you will be a raider when the crisis comes.
I guess I will be a raider then. I got a lot of guns and ammo, but my storage capacity is limited.
It’s not that expensive or hard to start, that being said, you’re never finished, hopefully.
Having a store of good quality, simple ingredients that you buy on sale and rotate frequently will in fact save you money. Shit, helps you and your loved ones stay closer by organizing and cooking/planing together.
‘Prepping’ is what people used to do before they ate premade, packaged garbage on the reg.
If ‘prepper’ means gardening to feed your family from summer through the next spring, and preserving everything by canning and later on, freezing, then my family has been ‘preppers’ for generations.
It used to be that going to the store to get stuff meant going to the general store to get flour in a 5 to 10 pound cloth sack. You stored the flour in a rodent-proof bin and used the flour sacking for kitchen towels. You can, in fact, get most of what you need for so-called prepping at Lehman’s in Ohio, because they still serve the Amish and Mennonite communities. They do, in fact, sell wood-burning cookstoves if you want one. There are companies that sell packets of heirloom seeds (as opposed to the hybrids from the hardware store), as well as heirloom fruit trees of all sorts.
When I see ‘preppers’, I see people who won’t be able to get along without the store once they run out of something, because once it’s gone, it’s gone. Self-reliance mostly has gone the way of the buckboard.
And anyway, the crisis was supposed to come with Y2K and didn’t, and then with bodaprez, and it didn’t, and yet, we still have the ‘preppers’ thinking it’s all about buying stuff and storing it instead of being truly self-reliant.
Sad, sad, sad.
I agreed with you but staying put sometimes isn’t always an option, well, for us city folk.
And if you’ve never killed and cleaned an animal please find someone to teach you.
When somthin’s strange, in your server room. Who you gonna call?
CODEBUSTERS!
When the data’s off, an it dont look good, who ya gonna call?
CODEBUSTERS!
…. I ain’t afraid of no Norks….
Has anyone read the source document memo for these allegations from “MI6”? Might prove an interesting read those who have worked in intel… just saying… Bush OERs and all