Many Internet security types think North Korea didn't hack Sony, and that black hats are responsible. The U.S. should abandon hacking other countries in favor of securing the Internet.
I recommend that those who are cheering the fact that North Korea's Internet has been screwed read the following story by Sean Gallagher of Ars Technica:
the evidence presented thus far by the US government that North Korea is indeed responsible for the attack is extremely weak. None of the Internet Protocol addresses embedded in the malware used in the attack were in North Korea, and most of them were exploited systems that could have been (and probably were) used by any number of cybercriminals and black hat hackers. All of the IP addresses were clearly acting as proxy servers, and some were used for spam and malware distribution.
Indeed, it's
likely that North Korea's Internet was brought down by black hats, not by the U.S. Government. In other words, those who are cheering the loss of Internet by North Korea may very well be cheering random individuals breaking the law--indeed, breaking the law to attack a country that might not have done the Sony hack.
I hope it isn't the U.S. that's doing the denial of service, because that would be an open invitation to every nation on earth to do the same to the U.S. International law is pretty straightforward. If you don't want other people doing something bad to you and your friends, you have to abstain from doing that bad thing to those people. Thus, the U.S. invading Iraq means that when Russia invades parts of Georgia, they just shrug and say, "Iraq." Edward Snowden revealed dangerous and clearly unnecessary hacking conducted by the U.S. against Hong Kong. Other countries who are hacking--and thereby potentially endangering Americans can just shrug and say, "Hong Kong."
The rise in illegal hacking is a danger to the entire economic system, on which we are far more reliant than North Korea. And the NSA has been deliberately breaking the Internet, making it more vulnerable to criminal attacks. It's time for us to give up on our dreams of hacking the world, rein in the NSA, and turn our government toward making the Internet more secure.
And maybe, just maybe, we--Kossacks--could grow up a bit about gloating over the problems of our official enemies.
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Added: Here's a link to the diary whose comments irritated me. One sample:
Awww! (65+ / 0-)
I HATE when that happens!
I guess Emperor Numb-Nuts won't be able to catch The Walking Dead on Netfix tonight.
So sad.
"Ronald Reagan is DEAD! His policies live on but we're doing something about THAT!"
by leftykook on Mon Dec 22, 2014 at 12:15:44 PM PST
[snark]Sixty five recs.That makes me so proud to be a member of the Kos community. [/snark]
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Added: Shockwave provided a link to an article byEditor of the Fabius that aggregates skeptics on N. Korea's alleged role in the Sony hack. Note that my diary is three days after the Editor's article, which in turn is well behind the appearance of skeptical commentary. So, the people who are still gloating about N. Korea's Internet being down are really, really slow.