How North Korea Conducts Cyber Operations

Rindfleisch
Published on May 17, 2021
How could a nation like North Korea conduct an elaborate hack against Sony over "The Interview"? What about the $100 million dollar bank heist against the Central Bank of Bangladesh? In this video we cover North Korea's cyber operations and overall strategy.

Ever since the 90's, North Korea has viewed cyber warfare and a network military as a power projection tool. For years, they've sent dozens of their soldiers abroad to learn computer science and hacking. Partner countries like China or Russia, have aided them.

Additionally, North Korea organizes political structure to strategically maximize resources geared towards cyber. It's estimated that they currently have about 7,000 soldiers working in their cyber operations.

Many people have the idea that building a cyber operations group is as simple as assembling a few talented penetration testers. The truth is that it takes a lot more than this. Some key positions include:

1. Developer (engineer tool chains)
2. Operator (execute tool chains)
3. Operations System Administrator (maintain systems and networks)
4. Administrative Assistant
5. Senior Analysts (sort and analyze hacked data)
6. Junior Analysts and Translators
7. Analysis System Administrator
8. Support Engineers (write software)
9. Leadership Personnel

Approximate Cost: $2,000,000

While this may seem like a lot of money, it's a drop in the bucket for the GDP of a developed national government.

These hacking groups create shell companies and websites to recon and then attack their objectives. Kim Jung Un and his army of cyber operators, are able to achieve high-reward results with fairly low-sophisticated techniques.

00:00 Intro
00:48 Operation Blockbuster
01:17 Kim Jung Un's Hacker Army
03:57 Funding a Cyber War
05:01 Build Your Hacking Team
08:18 North Korean Spies and Hackers
10:52 Counteroffensive Cybersecurity

Resources
The All Purpose Sword: https://ccdcoe.org/uploads/2019/06/Art_08_The-All-Purpose-Sword.pdf
Ignore the Penetration Testers: https://medium.com/@thegrugq/cyber-ignore-the-penetration-testers-900e76a49500

#Hacking #NorthKorea #Cyberspatial