Forwarded from: William Knowles <wkat_private> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59043,00.html By Brian McWilliams June 02, 2003 In North Korea's mountainous Hyungsan region, a military academy specializing in electronic warfare has been churning out 100 cybersoldiers every year for nearly two decades. Graduates of the elite hacking program at Mirim College are skilled in everything from writing computer viruses to penetrating network defenses and programming weapon guidance systems. Or so South Korea's government would have the world believe. Since at least 1994, military and intelligence officials in Seoul have warned of the growing threat posed by the "infowar" academy to the north, which they say was founded in the 1980s and is also known as the Automated Warfare Institute. Most recently, South Korea's Defense Security Command raised the specter of Mirim at a cybersecurity seminar in mid-May, where a South Korean general noted that North Korea is "reinforcing its cyberterror capabilities." Yet Pentagon and State Department officials say they are unable to confirm South Korea's claims that Mirim or any other North Korean hacker academy even exists. And some U.S. defense experts accuse South Korea of hyping the cyber threat posed by its northern neighbor, which they claim is incapable of seriously disrupting the U.S. military. "The KPA (Korean People's Army) is still predominantly an analog and vacuum-tube force," said Alexandre Mansourov, a professor at the Pentagon's Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. "We tend to overestimate the level of information-technology expertise in the North Korean military, and South Korea is especially guilty of this." Representatives of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, as well as its Institute for Defense Analyses and Information Security Agency, did not respond to requests for more information about Mirim College or North Korea's information warfare capability. Outside North Korea little is known about secretive Pyongyang's current infowar prowess, according to John Pike, president of GlobalSecurity.org, which maintains an online guide to North Korea's military. But Pike said the militaristic nation, which spends much of its gross national product on defense, undoubtedly is working to digitize its military. "It's not the sort of thing that a spy satellite is going to pick up," said Pike. "But even if the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) can't feed its own people, it's quite capable of developing and using the full spectrum of modern weaponry, including cyber." Indeed, the regime in North Korea would be grossly negligent if it failed to beef up its information warfare capability, according to Mansourov. Its adversary South Korea, one of the most wired nations in the world, makes no secret that preparing for infowar is a top military priority, he said. In its 2000 annual report, South Korea's Ministry of National Defense said a 5 percent budget increase was allocated mainly for projects such as "the buildup of the core capability needed for coping with advanced scientific and information warfare." The report also revealed that South Korea's military has 177 "computer training facilities" and had trained more than 200,000 "information technicians." Meanwhile, in North Korea the lack of basic necessities, such as a reliable electrical grid, presents huge obstacles to creating an information-technology infrastructure, according to Peter Hayes, executive director of the Nautilus Institute, which published a recent study of North Korea's IT aspirations. Trade sanctions -- not to mention North Korea's guiding philosophy of "juche," or self-reliance -- have further isolated the DPRK from the Internet and many technological advances, said Hayes. As a result, North Korea has been assigned only two "class C" blocks of Internet addresses, none of which currently appear active, according to data from the American Registry for Internet Numbers and Asia Pacific Network Information Centre. The DPRK's limited connection to the Internet reportedly comes from satellite links provided by a company in South Korea, and by land lines from China. Similarly, North Korea's designated top-level domain, .kp, never has been implemented. The nation has only a handful of websites -- the most sophisticated being an online gambling site -- none of which are hosted in North Korea. Servers in China and Japan host the sites. While Net surfing is available only to a privileged few of the 22 million North Koreans, leader Kim Jong Il is said to be a big fan of information technology. The dictator surprised many when he asked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for her e-mail address during a historic visit in 2000. Yet, despite being mostly disconnected from the Internet, North Korea reportedly has developed a vast intranet linking government offices throughout the country. The DPRK has software development expertise that is "competent, if not world class," according to Hayes. He notes that programmers in North Korea's Pyongyang Informatics Center have done contract work for local governments and businesses in Japan and South Korea to develop a wide variety of software. In fact, some in the Department of Defense have recently considered North Korea a viable infowar threat. In a 1997 Pentagon war game called "Eligible Receiver," National Security Agency computer specialists posed as North Korean hackers and reportedly were able to disrupt command-and-control elements of the U.S. Pacific Command. The following year, Pentagon adviser and Rand consultant John Arquilla concocted a fictional scenario, published in Wired magazine, of a global cyberwar engineered by -- whom else -- the North Koreans. In March 2001, a task force of the Defense Science Board concluded (PDF) that the Department of Defense was unable to defend itself "from an information operations attack by a sophisticated nation state adversary." Experts are split, however, on whether North Korea's hacker-soldiers currently pose a serious threat to the U.S. military. Should war occur on the Korean peninsula, a cyberattack by North Korea could disrupt the ability of U.S. troops to provide support, according to Arquilla. Such an attack would not necessarily emanate from North Korea's limited network. "There are many places around the world from which (North Korea) could conduct cyberwar, places that have all the connectivity needed, and more," said Arquilla. Arquilla said highly automated U.S. military processes, such as the "air tasking order" of an air campaign, or time-phased deployment of troops and equipment, could be disrupted by a North Korean cyberattack. "In such cases, the disruption of American combat operations and logistics could make a very substantial difference in the overall military campaign," said Arquilla. Mansourov, however, said North Korea is unlikely to be focusing its scarce IT resources on the development of a crew of hacker-soldiers. "The Chinese are very good at this and have the resources to do it. But I don't think the KPA spends its efforts there. They are more focused on development of missile guidance and C4i (command-and-control systems)," said Mansourov. Hayes said he believes North Korean hackers would not be able to create serious harm to the U.S. military's mission-critical systems, which are decentralized and largely insulated from the Internet. "I'm sure they can get into some systems at a low level and maybe divert some things," said Hayes. "But in the big picture, a few hackers are not going to stop the flow of American men and material in a major war in Korea." On the other hand, North Korea's highly centralized IT systems are prone to "amplifying and propagating bad military decisions" and are an easy target for physical attacks by smart bombs and other means, according to Hayes. As for South Korea's recent claim that Pyongyang is ready to create "cyberterror," a State Department representative said North Korea is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since 1987, when a Korean airliner was bombed in flight. Spokesman Lou Fintor said, however, that the State Department nonetheless remains "disappointed" with North Korea's response to international efforts to combat terrorism. While details of North Korea's infowar force are available only in fiction and propaganda, Arquilla is convinced that the country may have marshaled a world-class offensive infowar capability. "I believe that the North Koreans, whatever their limitations, have a capacity to think deeply and innovatively about military affairs," he said. "And what I have observed over the years convinces me that they are devoting considerable attention to cyberwar." *==============================================================* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ================================================================ C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org *==============================================================* - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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