Inside Cyber Warfare - Jeffrey Carr [55]
How many states have the technical know-how and strategic connections with organized crime to pull this off? Probably all of the usual suspects. Possible motivations, however, are not clear.
In my opinion, the most likely scenario is a nonstate Korean hacker living in China or Japan who saw an opportunity to embarrass the United States and South Korea and took it.
I expanded the investigation from the purely technical aspects to include a geopolitical component and that is how I made the conclusion I did. That meant looking into the cyber warfare capabilities of the ROK’s popular choice for a villain—the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), also known as North Korean.
The DPRK’s Capabilities in Cyberspace
North Korea is an interesting dichotomy. It is a society on the edge of disintegrating due to intense poverty, almost no infrastructure, a weak power grid, and a lack of natural resources. Forget about Internet access anywhere but within the DPRK military.
That’s because it spends almost of all its money on its military, particularly on training its highly educated young people in one of seven research labs, according to a paper authored by Christopher Brown while at the Naval Postgraduate School in September 2004, titled “Developing a Reliable methodology for Assessing the Computer Network Operations Threat of North Korea.”
The top three labs in 2004, as described by Brown, were:
Pyongyang Informatics Center (PIC)
“Today PIC employs over 200 qualified software engineers, whose average age is 28, with 1.5 computers per person (according to Chan-Mo Park’s article ‘Current Status of Software Development in DPRK and Collaboration between the South and North,’ August 2001). The PIC primarily focuses on software development and is responsible for the development of the General Korean Electronic Publication Systems, 3D CAD, embedded Linux software, web applications, interactive programs, accounting software, and more recently virtual reality software. It is reported that the PIC is also responsible for developing the filters to be used between the Kwang Myong Intranet and the Internet.”
Korea Computer Center (KCC)
“The KCC was established in 1990 by Kim Il Sung to promote computerization in the DPRK. At its inception, the KCC employed approximately 800 employees whose average age was 26. Today Kim Jong Il’s son, Kim Jong Nam—who also heads North Korea’s intelligence service, the State Security Agency (SSA)—heads the KCC. He is also the chairman of North Korea’s Computer Committee. In May 2001, the South Korean newspaper the Chosun Ilbo reported that Kim Jong Nam had moved the SSA’s overseas intelligence gathering unit, which operates primarily by hacking and monitoring foreign communications, into the KCC building. In 2001, the South Korean media reported that the KCC was nothing less than the command center for Pyongyang’s cyber warfare industry, masquerading as an innocuous, computer-geek-filled software research facility.”
Silver Star Laboratories (Unbyol)
“Silver Star Laboratories (SSL) was established in 1995 under the Korean Unbyol General Trading Corporation. According to Kang Yong Jun, the director of SSL, the average age of the researchers at SSL is 26 years, with most graduating from Kim Il Sung University and other distinguished universities across the country. Prospective employees are usually graduates of the Pyongyang Senior Middle School No.1, a genius-training center.
“SSL has developed such programs as Silver Mirror, a remote control program, communications, and artificial intelligence software. SSL also produces several language recognition programs and multimedia software, in addition to taking special orders from foreign companies (Korean Central News Agency, ‘Silver Star Laboratories of Korea,’ http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/1998/9809/news09/23.htm, September 1998). SSL won at the fourth and fifth annual FOST Cup World Computer Go Championship competitions, held in 1998 and 1999, respectively.”
In other words, North Korea doesn’t have the infrastructure to sustain