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back to article North Korea's finest spent 2017 distributing RATs, wipers, and phish

South Korea was the target of a barrage of malware campaigns last year. Cisco Talos's Warren Mercer and Paul Rascagneres (with contributions from Jungsoo An) spent the year watching goings-on on the Korean peninsula. The researchers focussed on one organisation (likely North Korean given the target, but this is unconfirmed), …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who has the most to gain from North and South Korea not getting along?

    Who wants to keep their bases in South Korea?

    Lets be realistic here, there is no way of knowing where a hack comes from and what exactly do North Korea gain from this? Why use an email phishing campaign? Not exactly state sponsored zero day remote access stuff is it.

    It won't be long before America starts fingering Iran.

    1 6 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Fair comment

      Based on the same logic, it is actually North Korea.

      At present North Korea is an example of a command state on an extreme war footing. If the situation on the peninsula improves significantly they will collapse politically and economically.

      The higher levels in their hierarchy which will be most affected will do anything and everything to continue the 5-minutes before the end of the world stand-off.

      This is very similar to our own situation with Russia. When the Soviet Union collapsed, that should have left without a job a gazillion of busybodies in CIA, MI5/6, NATO itself, Foreign Office, State Department, etc (any usual suspect, you name it). They, however, ignored the fact that USSR collapsed and continued to pile operations on regime change, training and financing "freedom fighters", etc. The fact that the freedom fighters went to shoot their ways through maternity wards, primary schools and run planes into buildings on OUR OWN TERRITORY was irrelevant. Though shall not stand in between a 3 letter busybody and his pension, yacht and sprog's college fund. Similarly, none of them has answered for the fact that the whole idiocy resulted in the ultimate blow-back called Putin. If it was not for the continued "keep the conflict alive" Russia would have long sold its nuclear weapons in exchange for some trinkets for the Adorable Alcoholic Kleptocrat in charge. Same as Ukraine.

      It is the same story. The biggest benefactors in a conflict which is 5 minutes before going hot and the most active in preventing it are the busybodies on both sides. There are some on the North side of the border and there are aplenty on the south side and in Langley.

      6 1 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fair comment

        Another way of looking at it is that "Axis of Evil" actually equals "Nation states that don't subscribe to capitalism or our way of thinking" (Our way of thinking is the false democracy where you get to have a rich elite while screwing everyone underneath letting them think they are the ones deciding their fate with token gestures like elections for politicians that generally do the same shit as each other protecting their own interests)

        Anyone in the Axis gets battered with sanctions and every effort to disrupt, destabilise and ruin under the banner of truth, justice and the American way along with all the lies and propaganda like claims of hacking which have no evidence to prove it either way. I mean come on, a malware email with the subject "Are you Happy", that's got to be some next level state sponsored thinking right?

        1 1 Reply
    2. Mark 85
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      Who has the most to gain from North and South Korea not getting along?

      Both sides actually. South Korea and the US on one side, North Korea and China on the other. China gets it's buffer zone (NK) and the US gets bases to keep an eye on China. The powers that be running things behind the scene have animosities going back a long way, China in particular has fears. This also applies to Russia which has fears of "out siders" invading that goes back a long way so they want their buffer countries.

      1 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        China gets its buffer zone? The Pacific is its buffer.

        0 1 Reply

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