Nearly everyone in SOUTH KOREA HACKED IN ONE GO
Personal information on as many as 35 million users of a South Korean social network site may have been exposed as the result of what has been described as the country's biggest ever hack attack. Local authorities were quick to blame hack attacks against the Cyworld social networking website and the Nate web portal – both of …
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Hmm, interesting...
This story has the word MAY in it alot....
However when El-Reg wrote about Sony, they forgot to add the MAY word, and implied everything happened at they had unequivocal proof that everyones details had definately been taken..
Seems depending on who you are writing about, you can spin things however you want....
Am I missing something?
"It's now becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between attacks on military, communications, financial, civilian or critical infrastructure targets,"
Seems to me if an attempted hack against military infrastructure is detected then it constitutes an attack on a military target. If an attempted hack against financial infrastructure is detected then it constitutes an attack on a financial target. If an attempted hack against....
I suppose many different systems could be targeted at once to hide a real attack amongst the noise. However, common sense tells me it would be wise to make any hack as quiet and as undetectable as possible. Unless of course the motive is to expose the inadequacy of security measures.
In and out without necessarily shaking it all about.
I'd blame the Norks
but it's pretty difficult to to do any serious hacking over a network consisting of empty soup cans and old pieces of string.
It probably is the Norks
When you have the resources of an entire country, it's possible to field a small but well-equipped team of computer specialists, even though the country can barely function. Much like the ruling family can live in luxury while the majority of the people are starving
I for one
Welcome our new string clad Nork bearing overladies.
Don't forget...
... that North Korea gets a lot of backing from China who aren't exactly blameless when it comes to mass hacking attacks....
@Graham Marsden, RE "Don't forget"
In fact in recent years it has become increasingly obvious that the Chinese regard their one time ally as an increasingly dangerous and unstable liability. I strongly suspect that China's main interest in NK nowadays is trying to ensure that it does not suddenly implode and they end up with half that country's population camped out on the Chinese side of the border as refugees.
Huh.
I'm sure someone is currenty tearing his hair out for forgetting to insert an by-IP-access rate limiter into the application.
Or did someone just copy the database dump?
Uh-Oh
Between the cloning and now THIS, I think we're completely flocked!
Not entirely sure ...
... illegally acquiring someone's personal details means they have been "hacked". The data holding institution got hacked. End user is the vitcim. Smites of sensationalism.
Hmm...
"It's now becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between attacks on military, communications, financial, civilian or critical infrastructure targets," he added.
That might be why they are having security problems, if they can't even tell if a bank is military or not, or a social networking site is financial, and so on. Of course, if they are serious, this is a form of fascism -- in that one tennet involves tying together government and private business interests.
Tsk! Silly SKs?
Why, they should use the UK model and SK telecoms merely sell information upon request No?
*troll face*
Now what's the good of having a Great Firewall of China if you're not gonna police it & keep the buggers in?! :-p
SImple
Their police ARE the buggers. Not only are they a good defense, walls are great for staging an offense as well.
a SIMS-like environment featuring avatars and virtual apartments
Gee, and I thought Facebook was the most annoying thing ever... But as I always say: nothing is so bad that it can't get worse.
What teh mass media has taught me recently
So basically, the NotW has now hacked an ENTIRE country??!!1!1111
Won't someone think of the (South Korean) children??!11!!!!1!
Is Windows to blame?
I wish that there were more technical details in this article. My understanding is that South Korea is one of the most Windows-addicted countries on the planet. The government web sites all run on Windows Server, and you are REQUIRED to run Windows on your computer in order to access them.
Without more details, I don't know if this was a Windows-based virus like Stuxnet, or something else entirely. But I keep hoping that an incident like this will finally wake people up that Windows has some built-in vulnerabilities, and Microsoft has difficulty closing these security holes because it would break backwards compatibility with existing applications.
Windows-centric
My other half is Korean (SOUTH Korean), and to access Korean blogs, news sites, banking or anything else you need Windows, or you get lots of errors. I've installed Linux on her laptop anyway :D That's mainly because there are a lot of pharming sites in Korea, but they all target Windows of course.
Network registered to asdfasdf
Who hasn't received 35 million spams and hacking attempts from Korea's poorly maintained networks? Only a fool would think that there ever was any security there. There must be something political behind announcing a breach now.
Call in the Pros.
China might desist if we use real pros to retaliate.
Perhaps it's time to wheel LulzSec into return the attack.
alibi
a new alibi for bart simpson:
the news of the world did it sir!
coat...
nearly everyone .. i don't think so
A bit of SPIN on the posting title.
Population of Korea is approx 48Million (2010 estimate)
Assuming the data theft was the stated 35m then this is about 73%.
Of course "Three Quarters of all Koreans hacked" isn't quite as punchy as "nearly everyone".
In defence of the article ...
In the article text it did say "those who are online". Given the proportion of haroboji/halmoni* in Korea, I suspect it is pretty much everyone online.
* grandads/grannies
re: nearly everyone
Last time I looked, the word 'nearly' didn't have any formal mathemetical ratios attached to it.
In short, you're both wrong. Or right. Your call.
Paris because I 'nearly' would.
Surely it would be easier...
"Names, phone numbers, email addresses, and other details may have been exposed "
... to just get hold of a phone book? The details might be a bit more accurate then (Hugh Jass, tel: 666 666 666 email: a@a.com)
to the panic station!
SSH attacks
We have seen a massive increase in SSH brute force attacks from Korean IP ranges.
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