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’
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’
Better known as P4x or _hyp3ri0n, this cybersecurity expert was recruited by the US government after his exploit. Disillusioned, he has decided to reveal his identity and continue the fight on his own
(...) 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.
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tl;dr: he DDoS'd all two of North Korea's routers
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."
He rented all types of servers around the country in the cloud and designed a denial of service (DoS) attack
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