[HN Gopher] South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users w...
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South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
Author : PROgrammerTHREE
Score : 419 points
Date : 2024-06-26 22:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
| Aerroon wrote:
| Unsurprisingly, terrible Korean internet strikes again. ISPs try
| to charge companies insane fees because customers want to connect
| to their servers. Company decides to use peer-ro-peer instead so
| the ISP starts installing spyware on customer computers.
|
| Makes me wonder where this myth of "good Korean internet" even
| came from if everything ends up so bandwidth constrained. Is it
| because all the customers and services are in the same city so it
| appears low latency?
|
| I hope everyone involved in this catches criminal charges, all
| the way up the chain. Completely unacceptable behavior.
| nayuki wrote:
| Another memory from the terrible South Korean Internet is how
| the national banks required customers to log in using Internet
| Explorer because of mandatory ActiveX blobs of code.
| TheRoque wrote:
| They have such weird constraints. Even Coupang Play refuses
| to load their video when I'm on Linux, which makes no sense
| at all.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| It makes me sad that all of these started with US's
| restriction on the export of cryptography, which prompted
| South Korea (among others) to develop a domestic algorithm
| that was unsupported by contemporary browsers at that time.
| quanto wrote:
| The US export restriction applied to other countries as
| well. The question is what has made Korean internet
| uniquely bad.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| I think the answer itself is clear to me: SK bit the
| bullet much earlier than most other countries, having
| implemented a nationwide ADSL infrastructure by circa
| 2000. The same thing happened to Japan for example, where
| early mobile services were so successful that they
| essentially stagnated further development until
| SoftBank's introduction of iPhone.
| rfoo wrote:
| It wasn't unique to Korean.
|
| 15-20 years ago Chinese banking website did exactly same
| things. Maybe they got the idea from SK, don't know. It
| only ended with widespread adoption of mobile phones and
| Chrome.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| One guy who developed and marketed and then lobbied a
| single solution that aged extremely poorly.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahn_Cheol-soo
| makeitdouble wrote:
| One answer is internet banking being way more cumbersome
| and less advanced in other countries. At that time
| spending time on the phone or have the customer come
| spend a miserable time at the agency was the prefered way
| from the bank's perspective.
|
| To this day many banks won't allow all operations from
| the online interface.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Active-X was AFIK a common requirement for banking e.t.c.
| during crypto export restrictions but once they where
| lifted almost everyone switched to https. What different
| about SK is the laws which keep their IT security in the
| past.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Can I get a link to a few of those sites? I want to see what
| happens when I visit using Firefox and tor browser.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| > Makes me wonder where this myth of "good Korean internet"
| even came from if everything ends up so bandwidth constrained.
|
| It is not a myth! A decade ago, though. I would still consider
| it is "good" in terms of objective metrics, but other countries
| have since caught up.
|
| > Is it because all the customers and services are in the same
| city so it appears low latency?
|
| No, because it would only apply to a quarter of the entire
| population of South Korea if it were true.
| yongjik wrote:
| South Korea at least used to have blazingly fast internet
| _infrastructure_. Of course that didn 't make up for shitty
| banking websites that you could only use by running Internet
| Explorer and allowing it to install "security plugins" that
| hook into Windows kernel, but at least the internet was fast,
| and it did give Korea an edge for its IT industry.
|
| That was, I think, about twenty years ago.
|
| I've been living in the US for 10+ years so I'm not very well
| informed, but basically the ISP industry ended up in an
| oligopoly where everybody's friends with the government, and
| they kept raising prices while neglecting infra upgrade. Until
| nobody can call Korea's internet "fast" any more.
|
| Now all we've got is shitty websites. (To be fair, they are
| somewhat less shitty now... you can now access your banking
| websites on Mac!)
| xenospn wrote:
| I remember visiting SK back in 2005-6, and the only way to
| get online was to install an IE plugin.
| VygmraMGVl wrote:
| This was true in 2013 as well. I've heard this has changed
| in the last 5 years or so, though.
| localfirst wrote:
| In early 2000s I used those Korean SIN number generators to
| access mmorpgs
|
| I stopped when my cousin told me it was illegal
|
| Have a lot of fond memories when there was a mini mmorpg
| bubble in korea
|
| N-age still going strong it seems in 2024 ! So many rare
| unique korean mmorpg that will never see the light of the
| day!
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I actually played one of those Korean mmorpgs that that
| an English version available ~2005 and I remember their
| website being a mess. It got wildly popular in the west
| to a point where the server started lagging and was down
| frequently, so they set up a second one.
|
| Then the cheating got out of hand so they added some
| anti-cheat software, and shortly after they wanted people
| to verify their identity by sending a scan of their
| id/passport. This is when 99% of players left.
| sixothree wrote:
| Honestly I think the only way to get rid of cheating in
| online games is to use some form of identity vetting.
|
| I know of one place where there is zero spam and it's
| because of the identity vetting infrastructure.
| localfirst wrote:
| This is why all the Korean mmorpgs required Korean social
| security numbers but what ended up happening is Chinese
| gamers started to steal Korean identities to cheat and
| farm items which lead to its downfall, they simply could
| not deal with the large number of Chinese users.
|
| Even source codes were stolen and Chinese mmorpgs would
| appear with the exact same gameplay but different skins
| and names.
|
| Wild times.
| philipov wrote:
| SIN like from Shadowrun? Are you SINless now?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| There were generators? I googled for hours to get Korean
| wow beta accounts.
| localfirst wrote:
| In the early days of the internet you could download a
| generator written in simple visual basic im not sure how
| it was able to do this but worked well enough to signup
| and play on almost all the online games
|
| Eventually was made illegal and what ended up happening
| was a huge korean social security numbers being traded
| online in Chinese forums (who had economic incentives to
| farm, hack, cheat items from korean mmorpgs)
| seoulmetro wrote:
| Korean internet is still extremely fast. It hasn't decreased
| in price sadly though.
| metadat wrote:
| Gigabit links to the home were cheap in South Korea 20
| years ago, something like $50USD/month, IIRC. The
| population is so dense, it was comparatively quick and easy
| to put in the infrastructure.
|
| Some of the fastest pirate FTP sites in the world were .kr
| at the time, it was crazy seeing 125MB/sec inter-site
| transfers back then.
|
| The ops must've set the machines up with a /dev/shm ramdisk
| or similar for uploads. There were no SSDs those days, so
| no way to even write at 125MB/sec, unless you had an
| unreasonably large Raid-0 array of WD Raptor HDDs, also
| possible.
| petre wrote:
| How can prices decerease when every provider is a chaebol
| in bed with the government?
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| The government could make upgrading the infrastructure
| and lowering prices a priority.
| XorNot wrote:
| I think this is sort of how Japan is often thought of as
| "land of the future" because where was a brief period around
| the 2000s where new tech adoption sort of got a little ahead
| of the US, but what people really missed was that they
| weren't ahead so much as just...kind of different?
|
| And the reality today is that it'll seem practically
| backwards to a Westerner - i.e. tons of paper forms and
| bureaucracy for things like banking and rental applications.
| sbarre wrote:
| I was in Japan in 2008 and the cellphones there were from
| the future! I remember being awed seeing people watching TV
| on the subway on their phones..
|
| There was a bunch of infrastructure and services provided
| by the actual phone company NTT DoCoMo (as opposed to
| generally over the Internet) that let people watch shows,
| play games, shop, etc.. all on their mobile devices. Stuff
| that we do now every day, but this was almost 20 years ago.
|
| They also had phones built for this purpose, like ones that
| had rotating screens that went into landscape mode (imagine
| holding a "T"-shaped device) for watching TV..
|
| So it certainly felt like they were ahead, but you're
| right, it was a very different approach with everything
| coming from the phone company itself, and one that wasn't
| set up to stay competitive or stay ahead..
| Sakos wrote:
| Other examples of this are the Satellaview for the SNES
| and the 64DD for the Nintendo 64, both of which were only
| launched in Japan. The Satellaview let you download games
| and the 64DD let you browse the internet. Apparently
| they'd also planned to have multiplayer online gaming for
| the 64DD, but that was never released.
| krageon wrote:
| On an infrastructure level Japan is literally not even in
| the same reality as the US. The infrastructure works,
| everything is clean and works, the toilets are usable and
| good. The mobile internet infrastructure is honestly fine
| and most likely better than what you'd be able to get in
| the US (especially as a foreigner).
|
| It will not seem backwards to a "Westerner" today. The only
| place where you'd really encounter forms as a human being
| is in government interactions (and possibly banking), which
| is not unusual or even particularly backwards.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > According to the news report, KT said it directly planted the
| malware on its customers that use Webhard's Grid Service, as it
| was a malicious program and that "it had no choice but to
| control it."
|
| Looks like the major ISP and some cloud service provider are
| having some kind of ridiculous fight, and they're using their
| customers' computers as the battlefield. I'd be pretty
| disgusted if I were a customer.
| petre wrote:
| They should be dusgusted. KT's market share something like
| 80% of landline subscribers and 45% of high speed Internet
| usets. This is Korea's equivalent of AT&T. The National
| Pension Service owns ~13% of it.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I imagine keeping at the front of the pack on any
| infrastructure investment is very difficult. I mean, it's an
| investment, you want to give it time to amortize, right?
| NL807 wrote:
| How is this not criminal?
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| It is criminal. From the article, 13 KT employees and
| contractors were charged.
| godelski wrote:
| It's also worth noting the SK has some pretty terrible laws
| around the internet in general. Distribution of porn is illegal
| there and they do their best to block it from outside. They are
| pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after people who
| make fun of government officials[0]. They have a comparatively
| low internet freedom score because they do things like fine
| middle schoolers for having anti-government websites and the
| president pursues legal action against YouTubers[1].
|
| It's pretty interesting when coming from the west where all the
| problems are often spoken about in the open. I mean the great
| American past time is complaining about the government. But in
| SK there's a lot more trust of the government and similarly, a
| lot more control by them. And it is a fairly tight knit group
| and there's only a few companies that dominate the country.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/world/asia/critics-see-
| so...
|
| [1] https://freedomhouse.org/country/south-korea/freedom-
| net/202...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's a lot easier to buy into a government when the most
| horrid example of one in modern history (arguable, I get it)
| is only 100 miles to the north with a huge amount of
| artillery pointed at you.
| godelski wrote:
| Not to mention when you were also very recently occupied by
| a neighboring country. And an extremely brutal occupation
| at that. I mean there's still a handful of women still
| alive who were sex slaves, it wasn't that long ago. Korea
| really has had it tough, but I wish that would be a drive
| for more freedom, not less.
| somenameforme wrote:
| South Korea has a far crazier history [1] than I think most
| realize. This [2] is the first president of South Korea,
| installed by the US, and then eventually ferried off into
| exile in Hawaii by the US after a revolution, leading the
| 2nd Republic of Korea. That was followed by coups and all
| other sorts of great things, including 4 acting presidents
| that did not serve more than 50 days a piece, eventually
| leading to the 3rd Republic of Korea which was another
| dictatorship who then had his dictatorial powers codified
| in the 4th republic. Then he was assassinated and you get
| the the 5th republic where the dictator's friend was put in
| power. Then you get the 6th republic in 1987 (!!) and
| that's the South Korea we're somewhat more familiar with.
|
| Even in modern times, I think most don't realize how wacky
| Korean politics has been. For instance the president from
| 2013-2017 (Park Geun-hye, daughter of a former dictator)
| was involved in some sort of weird cult-like grooming
| controversy where she was being groomed and controlled by
| what some media called a 'Korean Rasputin.' She was
| eventually impeached and imprisoned for corruption/abuse of
| power, and is now serving decades in prison.
|
| And it seems the current president of South Korea has an
| approval rating in the 30s. So I have no idea how Koreans
| view their government, but it's really unlike anything I
| think that we can compare elsewhere. But I suspect "trust"
| and "integrity" are not the sort of words that'd be on top.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea#
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngman_Rhee
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| And they are facing the demographic cliff of demographic
| cliffs...
|
| Although what I suspect will happen is that North Korea
| will fall apart eventually and South Korea will get a
| demographic surge from immigrating North Koreans.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Will China allow NK to fall apart?
| autoexec wrote:
| Would it be worth it for China to prop them up? I get
| that they're communism buddies or whatever, but what does
| China get out of it? What does China really need from
| North Korea?
| skhr0680 wrote:
| From the Chinese and Russian (Soviet) perspective,
| letting a few Koreans get oppressed is worth it
| considering the alternative, a land border with the US
| codedokode wrote:
| China can has influence over North Korea rather than it
| will be US (don't forget that there are two Koreas
| because USA and USSR both wanted to rule Korea but
| couldn't win against each other).
| snapcaster wrote:
| China doesn't want the US military on their border
| sooheon wrote:
| > and is now serving decades in prison.
|
| I wish. It's a national tradition to jail and then pardon
| the president. She's been free for years, and is often
| kow-towing and gladhanding current administration
| members.
| petre wrote:
| > They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after
| people who make fun of government officials
|
| Because cyber defamation would go rampant otherwise and
| people would end up killing themselves on lost reputation and
| cyber bullying. You have to understand Korean culture, where
| reputation and how you're viewed in society is extremely
| important.
| greesil wrote:
| That explains some managers I've had. Yeesh
| huimang wrote:
| You mean the Korean netizen culture where celebrities
| routinely kill themselves? Where people not only still
| bully, but rapists can sue their victims for defamation and
| win?
| petre wrote:
| I mean this. It's in Japan but Korea is no different. No
| one deserves this.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/24/hana-
| kimura-gr...
| godelski wrote:
| > You have to understand Korean culture, where reputation
| and how you're viewed in society is extremely important.
|
| I do understand it, and I think it is dumb. If it is to the
| point that it is causing people to kill themselves, it is
| dumb. This doesn't justify the people harassing others, but
| rather that the cultural element about getting so involved
| that leads to such harassment is also dumb. Cultures are
| hard to change, but at the end of the day it literally is
| up to people collectively deciding change is needed. There
| is nothing physical in the way. Habits are hard to change,
| but not impossible. And we should not excuse harmful
| behavior by claiming it is simply culture.
|
| (There are many elements of Korean culture that are great.
| But they do not necessarily rely on such a strong notion of
| reputation. Reputation can still be important without going
| to this extreme, where it is excessively difficult to
| redeem.)
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| I wouldn't comment over other statements, but...
|
| > Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their
| best to block it from outside.
|
| Incorrect, it's yet another incorrect meme. Legal pornography
| is always possible in South Korea, and while the actual
| threshold varied over time (because you know, there is no
| objective metric for them anyway so it has to be a function
| of the approximate social consensus), legal pornography is
| not necessarily "milder" than illegal pornography distributed
| via blocked websites. (EDIT: incorrectly put "stronger"
| there...)
|
| The South Korean treatment of pornography was extremely
| distorted mainly because of the rampant copyright violation
| over pornographic materials produced elsewhere. That blocked
| virtually all attempts to sell legal pornography and profit
| from it, why would you pay when you already have tons of free
| porns out there. Technically speaking, a large portion of the
| current adult population should have been found guilty if
| foreign producers could sue them, and I can tell you that the
| name of a certain blocked but still popular pornographic
| website [1] has became a household name for many males in
| their 20s and 30s!
|
| And here is where the SK law's technical distinction between
| legal pornography and illegal obsence material turned out to
| be handy. Since those websites distributed pornography
| illegally, you can just consider them obscene and thus
| exempted from the copyright protection (!). I really hate
| this situation and like to see the radical change, but I can
| also see that it would become a massive and uncontrollable
| international affair otherwise. So that's why those websites
| had to be banned (to signal that it is indeed illegal), but
| the ban itself is so weak that it can be easily bypassed
| (more effective ban would be harder to justify).
|
| [1] I don't like to quote its exact name, but as a hint, it
| is often followed by "ggeora _turn sth off_ ".
| skhr0680 wrote:
| I don't think it's a stretch to argue that porn is "de
| facto" illegal in South Korea
| jagrsw wrote:
| Thank you for taking time to write this explanation, but
| otoh it's a lot of words to say that it's "kinda illegal"
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| "Kinda" may mean so many things that "kinda illegal" is
| as useful as no information, hence all these
| elaborations. They also matter for the eventual
| resolution.
| jagrsw wrote:
| I beg to differ. Using "Incorrect" to counter the
| statement that distribution is illegal implies it's
| largely untrue. While a distinction between "illegal" and
| "de facto illegal" exists, your own explanation doesn't
| support such a strong rebuttal.
|
| You acknowledge that legal pornography, while technically
| possible, faces significant hurdles due to rampant piracy
| and legal loopholes. This creates a situation where
| accessing legal pornography is difficult and impractical
| for most, making the initial statement, that distribution
| is effectively illegal, more accurate than your initial
| "Incorrect" suggests.
| godelski wrote:
| > Incorrect, it's yet another incorrect meme. Legal
| pornography is always possible in South Korea
|
| I never said pornography is illegal.
| autoexec wrote:
| > the great American past time is complaining about the
| government. But in SK there's a lot more trust of the
| government
|
| Are they _really_ more trusting of the government in south
| korea or is that just what people will say if you ask them?
|
| If my government aggressively went after every youtuber and
| literal child who dared to say bad things about the
| government I'd probably lie and say I trusted my government
| too whenever asked.
| czl wrote:
| Relevant concept:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification
| godelski wrote:
| My partner is Korean, yes, they actually trust their
| government more while being aware of these things.
| linearrust wrote:
| > Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their
| best to block it from outside.
|
| Good. Why should any country be a conduit for porn? Most sane
| countries frown upon and limit things like porn, gambling,
| drugs, etc. Like we used to until fairly recently.
|
| > They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after
| people who make fun of government officials[0]
|
| It's like that in most countries. Other countries can have
| their own values. Nothing wrong with it.
|
| > They have a comparatively low internet freedom score
| because they do things like fine middle schoolers for having
| anti-government websites and the president pursues legal
| action against YouTubers[1].
|
| Freedomhouse is apparently a state propaganda outfit.
|
| 'Most of the organization's funding comes from the U.S. State
| Department[4] and other government grants.'
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House
|
| You are linking to a propaganda site created solely to push a
| political agenda. Germany has an amazing 'freedom' scores but
| you could go to jail in germany for espousing certain beliefs
| about certain events in ww2.
|
| That south korea scores low in the freedomhouse index is a
| good thing. Though it is surprising given that south korea is
| a militarily occupied vassal of the US.
|
| > It's pretty interesting when coming from the west where all
| the problems are often spoken about in the open.
|
| Are they really? You are conflating 'the west' with the US.
| Most of 'the west' is not like america. In most of the west,
| you can go to jail or be punished for speech. Most of the
| west doesn't have free speech that we do in america.
|
| What's with the neverending 'coming from the west' from
| foreigners here? So many foreigners here pretend to be
| americans here? Why?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| > In most of the west, you can go to jail or be punished
| for speech. Most of the west doesn't have free speech that
| we do in america.
|
| I'm going to assume you don't travel much cause on our side
| of the pound we can very much speak out loud of many things
| the US can't.
|
| In fact, we don't have the absurd taboos that force the US
| to use alternative words. We can:
|
| - Report "He disrespected his colleague, calling him a
| niger". No need to hide that behind "the n-word".
|
| - We can call pedophilia what it is and debate about how to
| punish it, instead of using acronyms like CSAM for fear of
| being labeled in a certain way.
|
| - We can show tits or talk about vagina and not get "porn"
| tagged all over.
| linearrust wrote:
| > I'm going to assume you don't travel much cause on our
| side of the pound we can very much speak out loud of many
| things the US can't.
|
| Pound? What country are you from? Why are people so
| sneaky? Hiding behind 'the west'.
|
| > In fact, we don't have the absurd taboos that force the
| US to use alternative words.
|
| What? None of what you wrote applies to the US and none
| of it has anything to do with free speech. It applies to
| woke social media. What does 'porn tag' have to do with
| free speech? Besides, my point was being jailed or
| punished by the government.
|
| > We can:
|
| Question the holocaust without going to jail?
| seoulmetro wrote:
| >Is it because all the customers and services are in the same
| city so it appears low latency?
|
| Yes. It's because the internet of Korea is so well done between
| nearly all areas of the country with great speeds.
|
| But it's true that Korean internet is super fast only within
| Korea, but the borders are also normal fast borders to other
| countries so they're just as fast as say a 1gbps connection in
| Australia.
|
| Good Korean internet is not a myth, they had fibre everywhere
| by the time rich people in the US or Europe were getting it.
| Korean internet is good, it's just that their ISPs are also
| fairly evil like the rest of the world, but they have less
| freedom constraining their evils.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40806633
|
| As said, it was good/impressive 20 years ago, now it's just
| what everyone else has. And SK software is a joke, like the
| linked post elaborates.
|
| I don't know if it changed during the last 5 years, but when
| I was there I wanted to use Google maps for navigation and it
| looked like shit, so after some digging around I found
| because apparently there are some SK patents that prevent
| Google from using a lot of modern tech. So no wonder SK
| people compare that to naver and think their IT tech is top
| notch, but if you compare it to the "real Google", it's a
| joke.
|
| It's the same in China actually, but there you simply can't
| access the western counterparts at all usually.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| The local variants of map apps are leaps and bounds ahead
| of Google Maps at any point in the last 10 years though.
| And that's not due to Google being restricted.
|
| Google is free to do what it wants in Australia, but it
| still sucks pretty bad.
|
| But yeah, SK software got sabotaged by people in power
| unfortunately. But the software also has some high
| standards from locals it has to live up to.
|
| So it's stuck in a situation where the app is quite neat,
| but it will be as stubborn as a mule if it needs anything
| to spec.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Wow, are they trying to have worse internet than DPRK?
|
| Funny how both spectrums of fully controlled market and fully
| free market can be terrible. Apparently what they did was a
| crime but it shows the spirit, they though at least that they
| can do it and get away with it.
| pezezin wrote:
| > Makes me wonder where this myth of "good Korean internet"
| even came from if everything ends up so bandwidth constrained.
| Is it because all the customers and services are in the same
| city so it appears low latency?
|
| Same here in Japan. The funny thing is that both me here and my
| parents back in Spain have gigabit fibre, yet my parents'
| connection is _much_ faster than mine.
| monkfish328 wrote:
| Wow I've always heard that South Korean internet is supposed to
| be one of the fastest in the world? How did that go wrong?
| h4kor wrote:
| Policy failure. South Korea enforced a "Sender Pays" rule for
| networks, eliminating peering between ISPs. This resulted in
| companies moving there server to neighboring countries to
| avoid paying for traffic, which was free before.
|
| More details:
| https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/internet-
| fragmenta...
| batch12 wrote:
| Did they exploit a vulnerability or MITM the traffic somehow?
|
| Edit: While looking for an answer, I ran across this article.
| Apparently they've been fighting for a while (2015):
|
| https://www.opennetkorea.org/en/wp/1529
| silotis wrote:
| Bittorrent normally hash checks all content against metadata in
| the torrent file so a simple MITM wouldn't be enough to inject
| malicious data unless the torrent metadata itself is being sent
| in the clear.
| LightHugger wrote:
| I had the same thought, i'm very confused about the details
| of the attacks.
|
| As an ISP if they detect you doing it, and they control DNS
| servers, maybe they mark your account for death, and they
| could like randomly hijack you going to google.com to some
| download for malware, and unsuspecting user clicks accept?
| Not sure, i'm curious how they pulled this off.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Any http exe-file download could be hijacked if you are an
| ISP. Maybe KT have some "dailup login" app the user needs
| to login with?
| flerchin wrote:
| But why would it be http?
| cortesoft wrote:
| I am wondering if this is one of those "using the term
| bittorrent for anything peer to peer" cases... maybe Webhard
| has its own peer-to-peer protocol that is more vulnerable,
| and they are just calling it bittorrent?
| esjeon wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's not literally BitTorrent, but a distorted
| version of it to build private _paid_ peer-to-peer networks.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Just charge them 250 a head for the equivalent for analysis and
| remediation should only cost about 150M usd plus about 10-20M to
| administer. Liquidate the executives holdings including stock
| then the companies assets and it will never ever happen again.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| Unfortunately, it's not explained in the article how the malware
| was actually sent to users. I wonder how they did it.
| zb3 wrote:
| Especially because BitTorrent is mitm-resistant (uses hashes)..
| did they find a 0day in the client?
| gavinsyancey wrote:
| Or mitm your download of the .torrent file (and/or anchor
| link site)
| NL807 wrote:
| I reckon they used a good old fashioned honeypot. Seed a
| torrent of some random popular content that also contains
| malware payload, and let users download it.
| WatchDog wrote:
| Yeah, until any details are provided, I would just assume that
| the ISP already requires that users install some kind of
| software, and they just pushed the malware through that
| program.
| kijin wrote:
| You don't need to install any software to use the internet at
| home in Korea. You just get a modem that connects to fiber at
| one end and exposes an ethernet port (or wifi) at the other
| end. Just connect to that port and you're online immediately.
|
| ISPs also provide TV and a bunch of other services, though,
| and some of them might require installing specific software
| in order to use on a PC. Or perhaps they hijacked an
| unencrypted download of someone else's software, most likely
| some component of the file sharing service in dispute.
| jowea wrote:
| The torrentfreak article seems more informative and has links
| to the source video report https://torrentfreak.com/south-
| korean-isp-infected-torrentin...
|
| From what I understand of the autotranslation, the ISP
| planted the malware somehow and that malware interfered with
| the P2P system, but no mention of actually using the P2P
| protocol to spread the malware
|
| https://news.jtbc.co.kr/article/article.aspx?news_id=NB12201.
| ..
| chunsj wrote:
| South Korean internet had been one of the best and fast network
| in the world; especially up to the point before KT was
| privatized. After privatization, three internet service providers
| have been focusing on exploiting profits, not on making better
| and faster network infrastructure because they don't have to.
| pennybanks wrote:
| wouldnt competition naturally produce better products if there
| are 3 providers? from what i remember services from companies,
| or really any type of services were top notch in korea. due to
| culture, competition, etc. also noting pricing in general is
| very high in korea
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| I'm not sure how is the reality in South Korea but, if my
| country is anything to go by, these 3 companies are probably
| a hidden cartel that monopolizes the price and offers while
| offering the bare minimum.
| katbyte wrote:
| Hello fellow Canadian?
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's no economic motivation to compete. The motivation is
| to raise prices slightly, wait for the other two companies to
| follow suit as a signal, then to raise prices again. If you
| raise and someone doesn't follow, backtrack to the previous
| level. This is assuming that they don't just have a meeting
| and set prices over drinks.
| creer wrote:
| Right. There are two possible very different strategies -
| even illegal collusion. There is no reason to compete
| aggressively until one of the "several" chooses to break
| ranks and do so.
|
| And if the one that breaks ranks is tiny, that might still
| not be enough reason for the others. Since there is a good
| chance they will just fail.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is one of those situations where rubber hits the road on
| theory vs real life. The concept of multiple vendors being
| better for the user seems to not play out as the multiple
| vendors are still a low number (3 in the current example)
| which means it's very easy for them to collude even if they
| never actually get in the same room, chat session, email
| chain, etc to do the colluding.
| jjmarr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
|
| Competition theory assumes that if firms are abusing their
| market position by overcharging consumers, competitors can
| enter the market and undercut them.
|
| When you have a market with very high barriers to entry
| (government regulation + physical infrastructure costs), you
| can't just start your own internet service provider to
| undercut existing Korean telecommunications, because you
| won't make enough money to pay your investment back.
| downrightmike wrote:
| The EU forces telcoms and ISPs to allow competition on
| their infra. Decent prices and good service
| tchalla wrote:
| Germany checks in.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yes, this is called a 'natural monopoly'. It's the case
| with most infrastructure - basically there is little
| incentive for a private company to be more efficient than a
| public utility, since anybody building competing
| infrastructure is infeasible, but because they want to make
| profit there is incentive for them to charge more and to
| cut costs in other ways (like not investing in more than
| the bare minimum of maintenance). So it generally tends to
| work out worse for the customers.
|
| Unfortunately some people genuinely believe the private
| sector will always deliver services cheaper and more
| efficiently than the public sector, so all around the world
| this mistake keeps being made. And the continual failures
| seem to never affect the firm belief of the adherents to
| that theory...
| achenet wrote:
| It's like people who support drug prohibition... ample
| evidence that something doesn't work won't stop people
| believing it.
| jamil7 wrote:
| This has been the argument for decades to justify
| privatisation of state infrastructure. Anything with high
| barriers or physical limitations instead just becomes
| monopolised. It's a failed experiment at this point. I'd be
| highly suspicious of the motivations of anyone arguing for
| this in 2024.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Forgive me, one time:
| LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL
| croes wrote:
| Who said it's a competition? Three providers could simply
| build a cartel.
| lazydonkey456 wrote:
| MITM by ISP and the government! Even SK constitution said it is
| illegal. but they don't give a damn about it.
|
| They are scanning SNI field and manipulate packet to prevent user
| visit certain sites.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| > Even SK constitution said it is illegal. but they don't give
| a damn about it.
|
| This is a popular meme that is also not entirely correct. I
| should stress that this incident is very different from the
| usual MITM from ISP and government though. I assumed you are
| talking about the general MITM because you mentioned SNI
| (because you can't put malwares with just SNI sniffing).
|
| The constitution only says about the "privacy of
| correspondence" in the Article 18, and several acts including
| the Protection of Communications Secrets Act
| (tongsinbimilbohobeob) [1] and the Act on Promotion of
| Information and Communication Network Utilization and
| Information Protection (jeongbotongsinmang iyongcogjin mic
| jeongboboho deunge gwanhan beobryul) [2] do have many
| exceptions that make them legal at least in principle. Indeed,
| most websites blocked by SK ISPs host either illegal obscene
| materials (distinct from the legal pornography in the SK legal
| system) or advocacy for North Korea (illegal due to the
| National Security Act guggaboanbeob). I'm not necessarily for
| such blocks but it is plain wrong to say that they are illegal.
|
| [1]
| https://elaw.klri.re.kr/eng_service/lawView.do?hseq=7235&lan...
|
| [2]
| https://elaw.klri.re.kr/eng_service/lawView.do?hseq=38422&la...
| lazydonkey456 wrote:
| So pornography threats national security? I don't think so.
| "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Even NK advocacy sites do not threat national security
| either, but I meant that such restriction is allowed by the
| law which was ultimately passed the Congress and so you are
| wrong to claim that it's "illegal". See also my other
| comment for the background.
|
| Also the watchmen argument against such restrictions is so
| old at this point that there are lots of counterpoints
| available for you, if you wish.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Police officials acted on the information and discovered it came
| from KT's own data center south of Seoul. ... They've since
| identified and charged 13 individuals, including KT employees and
| subcontractors directly connected to the malware attack last
| November,...
|
| I'm actually very impressed. If this happened in the US, the
| police wouldn't care about it at all, and would just tell
| everyone affected that "it's a civil matter" and they'll have to
| file a lawsuit if they don't like it.
| jrflowers wrote:
| This makes sense because the US does not have a set of laws
| that criminalize Computer Fraud and Abuse
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Maybe you're joking, but they certainly do. They'll happily
| use them against individuals too.
|
| But against a large company? I'll believe it when I see it.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The US law about this is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,
| it's clearly a joke. We're all in agreement it's not really
| used against large companies.
| None4U wrote:
| it's a joke, the name of the law is "Computer Fraud and
| Abuse Act"
| sneak wrote:
| Selective enforcement of broad-scoped laws via prosecutorial
| discretion is how real power works and how the status quo is
| maintained.
| jrflowers wrote:
| I like the idea that upon seeing a massive and
| indiscriminate MITM attack all of the various law
| enforcement agencies with a remit that includes data would
| just solemnly bow their heads and not attempt to stop or
| investigate it because a corporation probably wants the
| attack to happen.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Kevin Mitnick would disagreed
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| May he rest in peace.
| metadat wrote:
| Damn, pancreatic cancer in 2023. I didn't hear until now.
| yongjik wrote:
| I think you're too optimistic. My reading is that the police is
| investigating low-level employees and subcontractors. I.e.,
| profit for the corporation, consequence for the employees. And
| especially subcontractors. (Workplace discrimination against
| subcontractors has been a hot topic in Korea: subcontractors
| literally die in factories because they're pushed to handle
| dangerous tasks while "regular employees" get cushy desk jobs.)
| RF_Savage wrote:
| Yeah. At they pulled a Sony on a smaller scale and have
| better relations with the local govt.
|
| The people who ordered it done will be fine.
| antonvs wrote:
| > If this happened in the US
|
| Perhaps this would be a good moment to pause and ask yourself
| why this hasn't happened in the US.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Perhaps this would be a good moment to pause and ask yourself
| IF this hasn't happened in the US. :)
| kfarr wrote:
| Definitely not the same but I remember late in the days of
| Napster there were companies that would upload "poisoned"
| mp3's of popular artist that were not the actual song
| requested to thwart piracy.
| BillTthree wrote:
| https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/chinese-hackers-charged-in-...
|
| It took 3 years but the FBI published the names of the fellows
| they believe are responsible for breaching equifax and stealing
| private data about half of americans
|
| Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke, and Liu Lei
| poikroequ wrote:
| The title is very clickbaity. These are not users downloading
| torrents in the normal sense. It's users that are using a
| specific piece of software that happens to utilize the BitTorrent
| protocol.
| BillTthree wrote:
| There is an enormous issue here. A service provider committed
| crimes against customers and their justification is the
| customers were using a protocol to exchange something. The
| service provider has no idea what the something exchanged was.
|
| It's similar to arresting someone because they are speaking
| French. I don't speak French and I don't like people who speak
| French because sometimes French people say stuff I don't agree
| with. I don't know what they're saying but I hate it.
| quanto wrote:
| South Korea information technology (as distinguished from
| hardware-related technology) is unbelievably bad. Much of it is
| purely technical: domestic firms like Naver are simply not as
| good as global incumbents like Google, but also they are terrible
| compared to other regional players (The Kakao chat app is vastly
| inferior to Zalo, a Vietnamese chat app). However, just as much
| is due to poor cultural and interpersonal decisions. This news
| case highlights such a cultural factor.
|
| Note that KT, while relatively recently privatized, is still a
| national corporation that is considered a critical national asset
| under the law (thus if the North attacks, KT towers are first
| priority to be protected by the South's military). So, it is not
| as if some rogue SME infected its users with malware; it's a
| national corporation infecting its users over and not even be
| sorry about it (as in the article).
|
| Plenty of other comments detail the strange Active X requirement:
| The _national law_ had dependency on Internet Explorer /Active X.
| (I do not know of any developed nation having a national legal
| dependency on a specific corporation's consumer technology at
| this scale.) Also, many comments on South Korea's purportedly
| great infrastructure (albeit two decades ago). There is more to
| this.
|
| Interestingly, if you ask an average Korean, he would say Korea
| is literally the best nation in IT/internet technology, topping
| or at least on par with the US. The national propaganda effort
| that went into forming this collective conscious should not be
| understated. Even many of the top programmers in South Korea I
| met strongly believe in this superiority. I wonder if this strong
| sense of superiority is both (1) preventing SK from improving its
| actually-lagging tech and (2) act in Dostoevskian-Raskolnikov
| manners thinking that it is above the law and consensus ("the
| best can break the rules and set new ones"). Whatever the
| underlying reason may be, there is a serious techno-cultural
| issue going on in the country.
|
| One of the biggest banks in South Korea blacklisted Amazon as a
| financial scammer because it's Prime subscription renews monthly
| and customers complained after seeing the renewal charge on their
| credit cards. The ban was national -- no customer of this bank
| could buy a product from Amazon unless he calls the bank
| personally and ask the charge to be approved. Again, the issue
| wasn't technical. It was cultural.
| Affric wrote:
| lol, that is a scam though
| ken47 wrote:
| > many of the top programmers in South Korea
|
| Odd statement. How did you know that the people you met are
| "top programmers?"
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Hell Joseon strikes again.
|
| For context, the legal situation of network usage in South Korea
| is something akin to Ajit Pai's wet dream. Network operators are
| legally empowered to charge troll tolls on both ends of any
| connection they want. Infrastructure costs are to be borne by
| literally anyone BUT the network operators.
|
| To compound this, South Korea is economically an authoritarian
| hellscape. Large megacorporations[0] own everything and the
| government is just a clearinghouse and mediator for their
| interests. Corruption is so rampant that even administrations run
| by ardent anti-corruption activists wind up being toppled by
| rampant and widespread corruption.
|
| I guarantee you that not one SK Telecom executive will spend time
| behind bars for this blatantly illegal conduct. Anyone with the
| power to put people behind bars in South Korea will be unmade if
| they touch a chaebol.
|
| [0] These are specifically called chaebols and the group includes
| LG, Hyundai, Samsung, Lotte, and a few others. Japan used to have
| something similar, but they ate their rich... and then brutally
| invaded and colonized half of East Asia.
| pezezin wrote:
| > [0] These are specifically called chaebols and the group
| includes LG, Hyundai, Samsung, Lotte, and a few others. Japan
| used to have something similar, but they ate their rich... and
| then brutally invaded and colonized half of East Asia.
|
| More like the Allied occupation forced them to dissolve the
| zaibatsu. They later reformed as the keiretsu, and while still
| immensely powerful, are nowhere the level of the old zaibatsu
| or the Korean chaebol.
| ken47 wrote:
| > I guarantee you that not one SK Telecom executive will spend
| time behind bars for this blatantly illegal conduct.
|
| I mean, you're assuming that an SK Telecom executive did
| something illegal. I don't think anyone here is a supporter of
| corruption, but you're making a huge, completely unjustified
| leap to say that an SK executive was involved.
| Copenjin wrote:
| Not best Korea anymore.
| j-bos wrote:
| Facinating to see the same game played across nations,
| technologies, and time: https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/the-
| little-told-story-o...
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| > The judiciary actually ruled in favor of KT. It said that
| Webhard didn't pay KT network usage fees for its peer-to-peer
| system and didn't explain to its users how the Grid Service works
| in detail
|
| Huh? The users are paying for their network, so they should be
| free to do with it as they wish. How is Webhard involved in this
| discussion? This is something the ISP may wish to discuss with
| its users, if the ISP feels the users are consuming more than
| they paid for.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| How exactly was the malware deployed?
| Lockal wrote:
| As a former resident of Russia, I'm not the least bit surprised.
| The practice of implementing parasitic scripts there began in
| 2014, and to date has been continued at the level of the largest
| provider as well as the monopoly owner of international channels
| (Rostelecom).
|
| Good luck to the believers that someone there will be punished
| for this. For everyone else, switch to encrypted protocols.
| ken47 wrote:
| Reminds me a lot of the telecom situation in the US. There are
| lots of people who e.g. hate Comcast but basically have no choice
| in their area if they want broadband. Granted, a malware attack,
| is another level of terrible, but isn't it "interesting" how
| pseudo-monopolists seem to be resistant to meritocratic forces?
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