CNA • 26th January 2022

North Korean Internet downed by suspected cyber attacks: Researchers

SEOUL: North Korea's Internet appears to have been hit by a second wave of outages in as many weeks, possibly caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, researchers said on Wednesday (Jan 26). The latest incident took place for about six hours on Wednesday morning local time, and came a day after North Korea conducted its fifth missile test this month. Junade Ali, a cybersecurity researcher in Britain who monitors a range of different North Korean web and email servers, said that

Business Insider • 26th January 2022

North Korea recently disappeared from the internet for a little while, and it looks like it has happened again

• For at least the second time this month, all of North Korea's websites appear to have gone down. • Experts have said the outages may be the result of cyberattacks against North Korea, though there are other possible explanations. • North Korea saw intermittent outages around Jan. 14 that crippled all of the country's websites. North Korea seemed to disappear from the web for a period on Tuesday, an NK News reporter first noticed. Insider also found that several North Korean sites appeared to

Reuters • 26th January 2022

N.Korean internet downed by suspected cyber attacks -researchers

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea’s internet appears to have been hit by a second wave of outages in as many weeks, possibly caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, researchers said on Wednesday. The latest incident took place for about six hours on Wednesday morning local time, and came a day after North Korea conducted its fifth missile test here this month. Junade Ali, a cybersecurity researcher in Britain who monitors a range of different North Korean web and email servers, sa

NK PRO • 26th January 2022

DDOS attack cuts off North Korea’s internet after fifth missile test

Second major outage this year disrupted internet access and took all websites on DPRK servers offline A second major distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack against North Korean servers took the entire country off the internet on Wednesday morning, log files and network records reviewed by NK Pro show. The attack comes one day after the country completed its fifth missile test in less than three weeks. Websites hosted on domains controlled by the DPRK were largely unreachable between 6 a.m

NK News - North Korea News • 14th January 2022

North Korea kicked off internet by suspected DDOS attack | NK News

North Korea disappeared from the internet for several hours as crucial servers inside the country were unreachable on Friday morning, log files and domain records obtained by NK News show. The patterns of failing connectivity suggest that North Korea’s IT infrastructure may have been hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack, said cybersecurity researcher Junade Ali. “The intermittent connection issues, coming in waves, alongside the complete router failure, indicate this may be a D

ComputerWeekly.com • 6th January 2022

Avoid complexity in data storage decisions

A little while ago, I faced the challenge of migrating a digital asset management system to the cloud. As part of this, I had to migrate out terabytes of data on legacy hardware to a new provider. Add to this the fact that the storage hardware was based in a staffed office in a rural part of England with significantly limited internet speeds. Ultimately, I managed to broker an agreement with a nearby datacentre to allow me to copy data physically to an external hard drive, plug it into a rented

NK PRO • 29th November 2021

North Korean group deploys sophisticated malware suite against DPRK watchers

With laser-like focus, DPRK-backed ScarCruft orchestrated attack one expert described as ‘devastating’ to privacy North Korean hackers orchestrated a highly targeted attack against prominent individuals in the DPRK-watching community, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky detailed in a new report on Monday, using multiple malware strains with what one expert called “devastating” effects for privacy. The report, which sheds new light on technical details of an attack against North Korean defector Kang M

ComputerWeekly.com • 23rd November 2021

How software development will change in 2022

Over the past year, I have studied in detail how the software development productivity space is changing. Over this time, I have spoken to engineering leaders from dozens of organisations, reviewed the latest literature and even conducted representative opinion polling among software engineers. While the future is uncertain, there are three key trends that technology leaders cannot afford to miss. How tech leaders implement these trends within their organisations will help to define how success

ComputerWeekly.com • 13th October 2021

How to prevent developer burnout

Earlier this year, I led a joint research project between engineering productivity business Haystack Analytics and polling firm Survation, to understand the impact of burnout on developers. While there have been attempts to survey developer communities before, this represented the first time representative opinion polling was used to understand software engineers. When it came to burnout, the results were shocking. We found that 83% of software engineers reported that they were suffering from b

NK News - North Korea News • 24th August 2021

Hacked DailyNK website infected broad range of organizations | NK News

The North Korean malware attack against Seoul-based DailyNK has spread across multiple companies that accessed the website over the past few months, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has told NK News. The infections contradict Daily NK’s claim that hackers inserted the malicious code on pages only accessible to its own staff, and raises questions about the organization’s decision to keep its readers in the dark about the security breach. Senior Kaspersky Security Researcher Seongsu Park said the ma

NK News - North Korea News • 23rd August 2021

Half a dozen North Korean domains offline after apparent server outage | NK News

At least half a dozen North Korean websites and email servers dropped off the internet last weekend in a sign of growing instability of the country’s IT infrastructure. The server outage on Saturday night disrupted access to the websites of Air Koryo, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Naenara web portal, Kim Il Sung University, as well as the email servers for Sili Bank and Star Joint Venture, cybersecurity researcher Junade Ali told NK News. The outage followed a change last month in how b

NK News - North Korea News • 18th August 2021

Hackers infect DailyNK website with malware to spy on readers | NK News

For at least two months, hackers linked to North Korea have been attacking readers of the DailyNK website with custom malware capable of stealing files and passwords, cybersecurity firm Volexity revealed in a report on Tuesday. The attack used two known vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers to install malware dubbed “Bluelight,” according to the researchers. Once launched, the malicious software reportedly takes frequent screenshots, copies files, steals passwor

The New Stack • 4th August 2021

EngProd: The Secret of Elite Developer Teams

For companies to be successful, it is important to be able to get new ideas in front of users quickly, so you can keep up with the market and iterate based on real-world feedback. When technology teams find themselves unable to keep up with the pace of product development, they become the blockers of an organization. Ineffective technology leaders will pressure their developers to ship ever more work, causing developer burnout and software instability. By contrast, effective technology leaders

The Register • 14th July 2021

Report: 83% of UK software engineers suffer burnout, COVID-19 made it worse

A report on the wellbeing of UK software engineers (developers and DevOps professionals) found 83 per cent suffering from some degree of burnout, with most agreeing that COVID-19 was partly to blame. This survey [PDF] was conducted in June 2021 by pollsters Survation, on behalf of DevOps company Haystack, and although the number of participants was small (just over 250) it was conducted by interviews, rather than online forms which are vulnerable to low-quality responses. The respondents were

ZDNet • 13th July 2021

Developer burnout isn't going away. Employers need to act now

Big workloads continue to have a huge impact on resource-strapped software teams, with a new survey by Haystack finding that more than 8 in 10 developers suffer from burnout at work. Technology has played a key role in the fight against COVID-19, with IT teams helping businesses to adapt to remote working and digital-first operations. But this rapid adoption of technology has had a massive impact on those tasked with implementing it, with various reports highlighting the mental strain develope

Communications of the ACM • 13th July 2021

83% of Developers Suffer From Burnout, Study Finds

Eighty-three percent of software developers suffer from workplace burnout, according to a study from Haystack Analytics. The top reasons for burnout include high workload, cited by 47% of respondents, inefficient processes, cited by 31%, and unclear goals and targets, cited by 29%, according to "Study to Understand the Impact of COVID-19 on Software Engineers." Burnout worsened during the pandemic, the study says. The study also finds that 83% of developers are concerned about software reliabi

NK News - North Korea News • 29th June 2021

Experts warn report on North Korea’s cyber power understates true threat | NK News

A new analysis of cyber capabilities and national power has ranked North Korea in the lowest of three tiers, arguing that the DPRK’s offensive cyber operations are of low sophistication and hampered by the limited number of skilled hackers in the country. The report published on Monday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) put North Korea’s “cyber power” on the same level as Indonesia and Malaysia — an assessment that experts said underestimates the true abilities of North

NK News - North Korea News • 25th May 2021

North Korean websites go dark after botched server upgrade | NK News

More than a dozen North Korean websites were knocked off the internet on Tuesday morning due to a failed software update, according to screenshots obtained by NK News. Websites affected by the outage included the online presence of The Pyongyang Times, the Ministry Of Public Health and at least 14 other sites hosted on the same server, records on the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) showed. “The fact these websites are hosted on a single server which is liable to be taken offline by such out

HackerNoon • 21st April 2021

How To Assess And Improve Your Software Engineering Team's Performance | Hacker Noon

How To Assess And Improve Your Software Engineering Team's Performance Suppose your SRE team has just rolled out a brand new fully self-serve Kubernetes infrastructure, how do you show your boss that it's helped the engineering team deliver faster? Imagine your product engineering team has finally managed to pay down some tech debt through refactoring, how do you show the Product Manager that it was worthwhile for helping your team deliver business value in the long term? As an engineering ma

NK PRO • 2nd April 2021

North Koreans sharpen their cyberskills at online coding competitions

Free platforms may offer insights to threat researchers but help the DPRK build its cyber force, experts say Dozens of North Korean software developers appear to be honing their skills on freely accessible coding platforms that may help the DPRK build its cyber force, an NK Pro investigation of profiles across several such websites showed. But cybersecurity experts said that the participation of North Korean programmers in these coding competitions may also reveal interests, techniques and prog