Should we attack North Korean Web sites instead?

So if the North Korean government does get a proper Web site and the Web site gets attacked by some foreign hackers, would that qualify as "Western provocation"?  There is no danger of this happening anytime soon — North Koreans haven’t even bothered to register their own domain name — but, in case this does ...

So if the North Korean government does get a proper Web site and the Web site gets attacked by some foreign hackers, would that qualify as "Western provocation"? 

So if the North Korean government does get a proper Web site and the Web site gets attacked by some foreign hackers, would that qualify as "Western provocation"? 

There is no danger of this happening anytime soon — North Koreans haven’t even bothered to register their own domain name — but, in case this does happen, the excellent MetaSecurity blog has already analyzed this for you

North Korea is famously a closed society, which hasn’t registered or used its Internet domain designation (.kp). However, it does have a ‘government’ website operated by the Korean Friendship Association hosted in Spain. Over the past month the loose affiliation of hackers, pranksters and griefers operating under the ‘Anonymous‘ theme have reportedly organized two Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)attacks against this site – knocking it offline for 90mins at a time. Would this be seen as western provocation by North Korea? Who knows, but it does raise the question of how uncontrolled or accidental cyber-warfare could have unintended consequences, a new factor in an old dynamic. Unlike nuclear technology the ability to conduct cyber-warfare is not the sole preserve of states. Individuals, or loosely affiliated groups of individuals operating on a trans-national basis can replicate some if not all of a nations capability. The image-boards, which are the home point for these ‘Anonymous’ cyber attacks operate collaborative wiki’s to organize and co-ordinate their attacks — this enables them to harness the power of the crowd. The targets vary substantially from YouTube to Club Penguin, therefore interest in overt political statements are more the exception than the norm. Clearly there is much more to say on the ‘Anonymous’ and ‘Chan’ phenomena but for now it is interesting to note this new factor in an all too familiar stand-off.

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com

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