@Tryptameanie 576375 wrote:
There seems to be some evidence for it being DPRK such as Korean language packs found inside the malware but but we shall see, I’m not quite convinced.
if its a MS language pack they are used both side of the border and in all nations where Chinese, Japanese and Korean are widely spoken (same as we get a “European” language pack) -bear in mind also that North Korea is still seen more as a “dysfunctional and mentally defective family member” by the rest of Asia than a pariah or a major military threat; it is not as isolated from its neighbours as Western media puts across.
A lot of the “dirty” jobs the electronics industry depends on (such as processing harsh chemicals) are carried out in North Korea or by their citizens (how else would they get the money/resources for making things like crystal meth and/or atom bombs?) – they are not all banned from emigrating/leaving the country (some are working in Malaysia down the coal mines as their natives don’t want to do this dangerous job; nor can they convince many British people to do this work).
I can easily see how such a hack like this would happen and that more than one Asian nation could be involved.
Whether these are strictly “state sponsored” is unclear; by the standards the USA seem to use my own hacking in 1992 could have been called “state sponsored” as I got one of (the last) student grants (it was then a mixture of grants and loans).
Most of the time the students are studying computer science courses and are given perfectly normal and legal assignments by their profs like anywhere else in the world and stuff like this is done mostly for fun or in some cases to get quick/easy money – if targeted at individuals in their own or foreign communities (such as fraud/ID theft/cyberstalking) they would be judged more harshly by their own peers but targeting a big US/Japanese corporate making non essential products (the rest of Sony which makes analogue electronic equipment appears to have been mostly left alone) might not get them in as much trouble.
