Well, as credable as this sounds *coughs uncontrollably*, there is no gain for North Korea to do this. They know they have no hope of invading them, and this, if true would have been all over the news, which leads me thinking it isn't.


Well, this is my new sig. Small. Doesn't do any tricks either. No bouncing up or down or spinning... Bah. Youths these days, with all their bright lights and shiny wossnames...mumble....mumble.

There is no depth too low for Kim Jong-Il to stoop. While you would think that something like this would hit the news desks fairly prominently, the thing to remember is that the regime in N. Korea just about does anything it can to sabotage and undermine the South. It gets tiresome after a point.

I doubt seriously that the South was unaware of this project until such time as the news broke.

I don't see how anyone can be even remotely surprised by this. It's been going on for years. As direct military intervention (these days) is virtually impossible against any state shielded by an alliance with the US, "cyber-warfare" whether state sponsored or terrorist in origin is increasingly a realistic threat.

I'm still convinced that last years major blackouts in North America and here in Europe were deliberate results of hostile hacks, don't forget I posted here not long ago with evidence that at least one recent communications breakdown was terrorist in origin and was being covered up by the UK authorities. Cybercrime/warfare/terrorism has little physical risk involved, negligible financial costs, and the results far outweigh the effort invested.

As both Koreas are still in a state of war with each other, although no formal military confrontation has taken place, it's not surprising that the North will use any means at it's diposal to continue the conflict without reorting to open warfare.

..how I dearly wish I was not here..

Regarding the "Blackout of 2003" as our news organs put it.... It has been reduced to, unfortunately, lousy preparation, overtaxed equipment and disorganization in the Midwest power grid with the originating culprit being the penny pinching First Energy.

Last August, during a particularly sweltering week, First Energy started to have problems maintaining adequate power balance on its part of the grid. This difficulty
was communicated to one of the two power distribution monitoring centers but not the other. Also, only one of the two centers had the authority to order other grid members to assist to compensate for power imbalances that First Energy was beginning to experience.

The other center was not authorized to direct, only to monitor. And its member utility companies were not even required to keep the center updated regularly on what was going on.

Needless to say, First Energey, whose equipment was particularly old and particularly not able to deal with the high energy demands from the sweltering heat, had line failures or intermittent line fluctuations that it could not keep up with. Ultimately one of its main transmission lines went down (reportedly because it sagged to low as it got hotter and touched a tree limb and tripped out (somewhere in Central Ohio).

This immediately set a teetering grid off balance altogether. What happened after that was a cascade of power surges that pushed through the center that had no control authority much less news about what was going on (in Indiana) north through Michigan and into Ontario and thence to New York and New England. As the surge swept through, power stations automatically removed themselves from the grid and shut down (safety / protection systems worked properly).

Edited by - Indy11 on 5/31/2004 8:23:46 AM

i would be pleasantly suprised if they could get through the firewalls that the korean uni's stick up. some virus or another has yet to make a scratch on them. they hold hacking competitions in korea for gawd sake.

but i was betting on them doing some (cough)bio-(cough)terror(cough) first.

Do governments really keep their classified information on computers connected to the internet? Surely they keep it isolated to totally avoid a hack attack?

actually US armed forces rely on the internet and mobile phones for a great deal of battlefield communication and intelligence.

..how I dearly wish I was not here..

In the Beginning.,,,The internet WAS the US Gov't and Science community.

very true Ed - DARPAnet, wasn't it?

..how I dearly wish I was not here..

i thought it was ARPAnet

"D" for "DefenSe" but feel free to check it out and correct me if I'm wrong.

..how I dearly wish I was not here..

I think that it's "DARPAnet" too. I better make sure... *checks* Yes, it was. I remember learning about that back in the old days.

at least my memory is still functioning then...

..how I dearly wish I was not here..

Most of the time .