If we hired a gaggle of our best hackers what chance would they have of hacking into and crippling to any degree NK’s missile program?
Obviously it’s not something intelligence agencies would talk about but the odds are overwhelming that we’ve been doing that for years.
There are a lot of variables at play here. Firstly, how is their command and control system designed? Is it air-gapped? Hell, this is DPRK we’re talking about; they might be using manual controls. Also, it’s a reasonable assumption (“reasonable” may not be a good term for their beloved leader, but he’s not indicative of the entirety of North Koreans) that there are fail-safes in place… I hope there are. Thirdly, most countries would retaliate if they detected a foreign entity dicking around with their nukes, so we’d have to be incredibly careful not to get caught; even still, anything that goes wrong with their program gives them the latitude to blame anyone they want unless someone claims responsibility. My final thought is this: any network attack will disrupt C&C, but comms are generally recoverable, and the weapons are still there. Network attacks aren’t a panacea (despite what the various media outlets and movies would have you believe).
I would also have to assume we’ve been at it for years. It’s widely assumed that the US and Israel used Stuxnet to interfere with Iran’s nuclear program, apparently succeeding in causing some significant disruption. I would imagine a similar tactic is likely to have been used against North Korea’s nuclear program. It’s possible we even succeeded causing some disruption but the impact was not publicly disclosed.
I think the best to hope for in a hacking attack like that is that you can slow down the other side for a while. But once they kick out the hackers and regroup, they can go back to making progress before you break in again. And breaking in to an air-gapped network (presumably) in a very repressive regime takes some doing.
Looking at Wikipedia, the DPRK ICBMs seem to be based off of Soviet era technology. It would make sense to buy the entire platform, or buy components from said platform, to assemble later. Pretty good chance that this is some dated equipment that aside from a very basic point-to-point control system, won’t be able to be breached from the Internet.
Unless we have proximity, through an agent in place, or we get someone there, we won’t be able to touch it. We could try the stuxnet route, but, unlike stuxnet, computers and related technology are extremely scarce in the DPRK. Just read some blogs on security and you’ll know enough to not connect that control system to any network, and never use a USB stick.
The OP talked about sabotaging North Korea’s missile program not just their missiles. That’s the design, the development, the construction of parts, the assembly into a missile, the fuel, the testing, the launch, controlling the flight, the support facilities, etc. There’s a whole lot of steps involved in making a missile fly. And that’s just the missile. They have to do it all again for the warhead.
I guess I’ve never stopped to consider whether the KN-08 is part of the Internet of Things.
I probably wasn’t as clear as I should have been but that’s more along the lines of what I was thinking - not dicking around with their nukes. Not that I know much about missiles (or hacking for that matter) but it seems getting a ICBM to fly true requires a lot of complicated steps that might be able to sabotaged somewhere along the line. If computer technology is indeed scarce in NK it stands to reason so might their ability to defend against hacking.
ETA: addressing Little Nemo’s post.
North Korea is believed to be behind the hacking of Sony Pictures three years ago and the theft of about $80 million from the central bank of Bangladesh about eighteen months ago. So they do have hackers of their own.
They paid people to do that. There’s blogs and articles on it if you look.
But, in regards to their technology, again, everything seems to be based off of Soviet-era technology as far as we know. I really doubt they have the facilities and skillset to reliably manufacturer everything in house. This is the scenario about nuclear proliferation that a lot of intelligence agencies were worried about after the fall of the Soviet Union.
So, the question is, how do we hack Soviet technology? I dunno about you, but if I were to make a system like this I would probably design it to be air-gapped from the beginning. The easiest way that I can think of would be to use HUMINT and find a weak spot in the supply chain, intercept some hardware that deals with flight or launch control, somehow reverse engineer that stuff, and put some sort of code to affect reliability or something.
But, again, Soviet technology from the 80’s. Like, what IC chips, if any were used? Who made them, what programming language, etc.? It’d be hard enough to modify something we made from the 80’s.
Projects have human leaders, who are often difficult or impossible to replace.
Just ask Gerald Bull, who worked for Iraq building a giant gun that could throw artillery shells for miles, and even launch one into orbit. Until either Israel or Iran suggested he stop, and when he didn’t, they stopped him with 5 bullets to the head.
It might be easier to stop the North Korean project by stopping the technicians leading it, than by hacking old equipment.