Alejandro Cáceres, the hacker who took down North Korea’s internet from his home: ‘My attack was a response to their attempt to spy on me’ (english.elpais.com)
from andrade@infosec.pub to cybersecurity@infosec.pub on 26 Jun 2024 00:02
https://infosec.pub/post/14127624

(…) the internet went down across the country. A wave of cyberattacks left all systems on hold for more than seven days. First, the main national websites failed, from the official news site to the booking page of the national airline. Then, the Asian state’s connections with the rest of the world were interrupted. Emails could not be sent or received; there was no connection to cloud services. The blockade was complete.

#cybersecurity

threaded - newest

Granite@lemmy.world on 26 Jun 2024 00:08 next collapse

What did you do today? Destroyed the internet of an authoritarian regime, you?

downpunxx@fedia.io on 26 Jun 2024 01:19 next collapse

note to self : do not fuck with alejandro

Mango@lemmy.world on 26 Jun 2024 09:34 collapse

Lady Gaga seemed to have a good time of it.

Hello_there@fedia.io on 26 Jun 2024 02:04 next collapse

Thx op

catloaf@lemm.ee on 26 Jun 2024 03:15 next collapse

tl;dr: he DDoS’d all two of North Korea’s routers

PaX@hexbear.net on 26 Jun 2024 03:52 next collapse

He rented all types of servers around the country in the cloud and designed a denial of service (DoS) attack

<img alt="doug-clap" src="https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/4d44f90b-25db-4977-bee7-e0262a9e0e98.png"> What a uniquely skilled individual!

His feat did not go unnoticed. Over the next year he had meetings with officials from the United States Cyber Command, the branch of the armed forces dedicated to this field. He also met with officers from the Marines, the Space Operations Command and intelligence (NSA). Cáceres shared with them the keys to his successful operation and told them that, in his opinion, similar operations could be carried out with small commandos of two to four hackers. That would give them agility, autonomy and the ability to react.

Me, a cyber-commando, dressing up in full tactical gear, ready for anything, for the trip from my gaming chair to my refrigerator to get beer while I watch my rented Azure servers send spam to a small country’s routers

He tried, but failed. “To do anything you need authorization, which takes six months to get. And when you get it, what you wanted to do no longer works. That is the reality here in the U.S.: we have very, very good people working on our cyber defense, but they are hogtied. They can’t do anything, even though I know we have the resources to do a lot.”

Smh our bureaucratic government won’t approve my request to start a war with the DPRK from my couch

If he did this to any other small nation, especially a US-aligned one, he would be charged with a serious crime. The US can’t openly do electronic warfare but they can stand by and watch this clown do what basically amounts to cyber-terrorism, a least for a little while

Anyway, now that he doxxed himself I hope the DPRK actually gives him something to fear lol

Also

And ever since he took down the internet in North Korea, he has also been approached by the National Security Agency (NSA). Everyone wanted to know how he did it.

Lmao

This is peak journalism, they obviously took him at his word

Barbarian@sh.itjust.works on 26 Jun 2024 06:00 collapse

What normal people hear: “He took down the routers with some crazy complicated algorithms. He’s Neo in the matrix.”

What IT professionals hear: “He hired a bunch of people to keep sending spam letters to their tiny mailboxes until they were so stuffed that they couldn’t receive any legitimate mail.”

UndulyUnruly@lemmy.world on 26 Jun 2024 04:43 next collapse

„We and our 846 partners

Au revoir!

Etterra@lemmy.world on 26 Jun 2024 06:24 next collapse

Florida Man Crashed Internet in All of North Korea

tal@lemmy.today on 26 Jun 2024 08:23 collapse

Unless things have changed, North Korea doesn’t have a whole lot by way of Internet. I think they used to have two Class C netblocks, 256 IP addresses each.

kagis.

They’re apparently up to four.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea

As of February 2023 North Korea has four IPv4 subnets, all announced by AS131279, named “Ryugyong-dong”.[52] The subnets are:[53]

175.45.176.0/24 (175.45.176.0–255)

175.45.177.0/24 (175.45.177.0-255)

175.45.178.0/24 (175.45.178.0–255)

175.45.179.0/24 (175.45.179.0–255)

The regime doesn’t like people having access to outside information.