North Korea’s 6800 hackers have gotten their Commodore 64’s prepped and ready. Too bad they’re still using dialup – PB/TK
The World Can Expect More Cybercrime From North Korea Now That China Has Banned Its Coal – Charlie Campbell / Beijing Feb 20, 2017
On Sunday, China suspended imports of North Korean coal for the rest of the year, in a move widely seen as a punitive response to the assassination of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s older half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, who was close to the Chinese leadership.
The 45-year-old was poisoned at Kuala Lumpur airport and died on his way to hospital. Two women — one Vietnamese and one Indonesian — and two men — one Malaysian and one North Korean — have been detained in connection with his death. Malaysian police also want to talk to four other North Koreans who apparently fled the country soon after the attack.
Kim Jong Nam was estranged from his homeland and mostly lived in the semiautonomous Chinese territory of Macau. That he was essentially under Chinese protection makes his death especially galling for Beijing, which has grown increasingly wary of Pyongyang’s erratic behavior and pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The moratorium brings Beijing into compliance with February’s U.N. Security Council resolutions over North Korea’s nuclear program. (China had signed up to the unprecedented economic measures, though implementation had been spotty owing to a clause that allowed trade deemed essential for the “livelihoods” of the North Korean people.)
That loophole has now narrowed, and the suspension of coal imports will hurt Pyongyang’s pockets — coal is responsible for around half of North Korea’s foreign-currency acquisitions — and increase pressure on the regime. It will also be welcomed in Washington; President Donald Trump has long argued that Beijing has not been strict enough on its secretive eastern neighbor
However, one likely consequence will be a spike in illicit methods of currency generation — especially cybercrime. North Korea already has an elite squad of 6,800 state hackers who are engaged in global fraud, blackmail and online gambling, together generating an estimated annual revenue of $860 million, according to the Korea Institute of Liberal Democracy in Seoul.
Continue to time.com article: http://time.com/4676204/north-korea-cyber-crime-hacking-china-coal/?xid=homepage
