Slight tangent: How can Lazarus/HIDDEN COBRA be such a sophisticated nation state actor when North Koreans can barely access the internet until becoming government employees?
One would think that being unable to access modern security research, open source projects, programming resources, or "wild" malware would not exactly raise a nation of brilliant hackers. Perhaps some who subvert the great firewall are vanned and offered a job in the unit?
>being unable to access modern security research, open source projects, programming resources, or "wild" malware
how do you know they are unable to obtain such things?
also, how do you think hackers are trained? by teaching them how to create a ToDo app with the nightly build of React?
they probably know by heart the ethernet and TCP/IP stack better than the guys who created them and could recite it backwards, and that's already enough to hack plenty of things
I think (based on my limited research) it's either a loose affiliation (mainly based in China or Russia), or the children of party elites who likely have more privileges and access than thr average North Korean.
The story I may have heard from a talk by a Dutch cyber security organisation is that they train their hackers inside the country and then ship them off (under heavy oversight, of course) to China, where they'll operate from internet cafes.
They recruit the best from school early on and their training is intense. It's a very desirable job in a country that has food, electricity and other shortages.
Have a listen to the Lazarus Heist podcast for more information.
One would think that being unable to access modern security research, open source projects, programming resources, or "wild" malware would not exactly raise a nation of brilliant hackers. Perhaps some who subvert the great firewall are vanned and offered a job in the unit?