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  4. Bringing Down North Korea

Bringing Down North Korea

Presented at DEF CON 32 (2024), Aug. 11, 2024, 1:30 p.m. (45 minutes).

In January 2021, I discovered that North Korean state-backed agents were targeting security researchers. A few people got hit, including me. They didn't get anything, but I was very frustrated by the inaction of law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and DoD. I decided I was going to see what I could do. Armed with my computer and a bunch of Takis I got to work mapping out NK's infrastructure. This talk will detail the methods and tools I used to bring down North Korea's internet for 9 days along with the architectural and other vulnerabilities I found that allowed for the attack. This presentation will cover the technical aspects of the attack, criticisms of the DoD and Intel Community, praise from the DoD and Intel Community and the implications of a small team of hackers, or just one dude, causing real-world impact. Attendees will gain insights into create methodologies for network exploitation and the ethical, practical, and resistance from the government to cyber guerrilla warfare, demonstrating the need for agile and responsive cyber capabilities in the modern world. 1. Greenberg, Andy. "The Hacker Who Took Down North Korea's Internet." Wired. [link](https://www.wired.com/story/p4x-north-korea-internet-hacker-identity-reveal/). 2. Greenberg, Andy. "North Korea Hacker Internet Outage." Wired. [link](https://www.wired.com/story/north-korea-hacker-internet-outage/). 3. DEF CON 21 Talk: "Conducting massive attacks with open source distributed computing" [link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zLhb1RT8KI) 4. DEF CON 29 Talk: "WTF happened to that tool that was like Shodan but for web app vulns?" [link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlS_sl4hTWg) 5. DEF CON 21 Talk: "The Dawn of Web 3.0: Website Mapping and Vulnerability Scanning" [link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ1xWwGYQF8). 6. The Register: [link](https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/26/north_korea_targeted_me_0_day/)

Presenters:

  • Alejandro Caceres - Owner at Hyperion Gray
    Alex is the dude that took down North Korea's Internet routing for 9 days. He owns Hyperion Gray and creates a bunch of open source software.

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