Vigilante hacker attacks foreign nation internet infrastructure on behalf of the U.S. without the U.S.'s consent and wants to encourage the U.S. to perform more similar cyber attacks, but witout the approval of the chain of command, without thinking of the repercussions on international relations.
I don’t know, but this doesn’t sond likea good idea.
I don’t see the point in attacking North Korea when Lazarus et al are well known to do their digital wetwork via diaspora, so DDoS’ing a nation is effectively carpet bombing citizenry for government actions when you should be taking a scapular approach to threat actor countermeasures.
Seems like this person has anger blinders permanently affixed to their head and is only concerned with vamping up their own “hacker cred” to put weight behind selling their basic ass web vulnerability scanner.
Hard pass on both qomplex and punkspider.
Yeah good point on the anger glasses. He sounds like an agressive type of dude. Says he worked for Blackwater? The mercenaries company known for their crimes against humanity in Iraq, if I’m not mistaken? What normal person would want to work there?
DDoS’ing a nation is effectively carpet bombing citizenry for government actions when you should be taking a scapular approach to threat actor countermeasures.
my understanding is that the only NK citizens that have access to the actual internet is microscopic and concentrated in information warfare / scams.
Are you laboring under the false impression that the average citizens of North Korea have, forget regular, but ANY access to the internet? Carpet bombing doesn’t work if you’re already a ghost.
…therefore you would be fine with this same action if it’s not NK?
The person in this article wants this same baseline cyber response to any countries attacking.
Look down the road where this decision takes everyone.
I generally agree with you but isn’t the n Korean internet only used by the government and whatever rich people can afford it? I say fuck em.
I’ve heard the same and I generally view that as propaganda since NK have been actively maintaining a Linux distro since 98 (Red Star OS) so it’s not like they’re total luddites, just under oppressive dictatorial control.
I personally can’t condone attacking random people based on geoloc for the actions of their dictator but I absolutely understand your point of view.
Yes.
Internet access is available in North Korea, but is only permitted with special authorization. It is primarily used for government purposes, and also by foreigners … Online services for most individuals and institutions are provided through a free domestic-only network known as Kwangmyong, with access to the global Internet limited to a much smaller group.
Wikipedia
It sounds like a Hollywood movie. “Hacker tattoos”? Single person took on an entire country? I dunno, something about this is off, like it’s too juicy of a story for Wired to scrutinize it properly and there’s really more (or less) to the story.
Something tells me the last thing the world needs from a cybersecurity standpoint is a leaner, meaner Pentagon that can launch cyberattacks faster than they can assess the likely impact
In the article it states the average lead time for a Pentagon-organized cyberattack is six months.
The main point of the article is that this guy is basically trying to push the Pentagon to be more like him, a guy who took personal offense when a North Korean hacker tried to drive-by hack him then took the entire country offline without first considering whether or not they might retaliate against an actual lone wolf attacker, or whether this is a rational response as an individual to the existence of organized nation-state attackers.
Basically, he’s lucky the Pentagon took an interest in him. The article points out that the officials he shared his attack with were well aware the main reason they couldn’t do something similar is literally just bureaucracy. He’s not offering anything new on a technical level, he just wants the Pentagon to shoot from the hip more often and worry less about the consequences of their actions.
TBH, probably everybody in the world would prefer the slower, less aggressive Pentagon we have now rather than one that goes around picking fights with every nation-state and group that pisses it off for like, any reason.
“cybersecurity entrepreneur with hacker tattoos on both arms“ what’s a hacker tattoo? Your IP address? This article was really short on how he did it.
Nah, the Kali Linux logo. Everyone knows using Kali makes you a hacker, and getting a kali tat gives you immediate hacker xp.
He took down all of it, like the whole three computers?
Their IP address range is hilariously small at 1024 addresses total (175.45.176.0/22). That’s about one IP address for every 24,400 people.