
North Korea Hackers Step Up Bitcoin Attacks - qu4ntumturk
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-11/north-korea-hackers-step-up-bitcoin-attacks-amid-rising-tensions
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brandur
I've always been a little curious how North Korea is able to produce hackers
that are competitive on a global scale. It's not only that an average North
Korean would grow up with access to fewer resources compared to many
countries, but you'd also think that the same information embargo used to keep
the population in line would also compromise the ability of the best technical
people to educate themselves. Extremely limited access to internet, current
books, a creative community (either in-person or virtual), software, tooling,
etc.

I guess the answer is the same as how the country is able to win gold medal at
the Olympics [1] – money (and lots of it) sunk into state-sponsored training
programs — but I'm a little surprised that it's effective. Even in the US, a
school that would consistently produce A-grade hackers would be pretty hard to
build.

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[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_at_the_Olympics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_at_the_Olympics)

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yorwba
Anecdata time: I'm currently an exchange student in China and one of my
Chinese friends told me about his attempt to make friends with two North
Koreans in his class. They were apparently always staying together, sleeping
in the same dorm room, going to the washroom at the same time, the works. When
my friend tried to talk to them, they immediately left as if they were afraid.

I have read that this is a common tactic North Korea employs when sending
people abroad for business (or, in this case, study). Their families are kept
as hostages, and if any of them were trying to escape, they would all be
punished. So they have to constantly check on each other for fear of their own
lives and those of their families.

So North Korea doesn't need to build an elite hacker school themselves, they
can just send promising candidates out of the country, make sure that they do
nothing but study, and ensure their return using the threat of violence.

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nenreme
That's also how their border guard works.

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woogiewonka
What a load of horseshit. From the referenced report:

"In 2016 we began observing actors we believe to be North Korean" \- key
phrase "we believe".

"Now, we may be witnessing a second wave of this campaign" \- "may be".

The whole article is just fishing for connections with zero ties to anything
solid. Even if they did connect two dots, we can now claim that a few people
doing something is the entire North Korean regime? Pppplease.

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giancarlostoro
Well, if it is someone in NK, how likely is it that an ordinary citizen can do
it?

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ringaroundthetx
Because its the same as "Russian hackers"

anyone in the world with a proxy can pretend to be the "state sponsored
hacker"

I don't see how people are still falling for this, but hey it still works and
you can make millions of dollars without prosecution.

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giancarlostoro
How good are these guys, and what happens if... NK gets all internet access
cut off from the rest of the world?

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willvarfar
In the aftermath of the Sony hack the NSA burned a few taps when it became
known that they monitored the boxes in China that the NK hackers use as
staging servers.

