North Korea's unsuccessful missile launch 'may have been thwarted by US cyber attack'

[jpak]

Source: Telegraph UK

A North Korean missile launch that failed shortly after it was fired may have been thwarted by cyber attacks from the US.

The medium-range missile exploded seconds after it was launched on Sunday from a site near the port city of Sinpo, as Mike Pence, the US vice president, arrived in Seoul for talks with the South Korean government over how to deal with Pyongyang's belligerence.

"It could have failed because the system is not competent enough to make it work, but there is a very strong belief that the US - through cyber methods - has been successful on several occasions in interrupting these sorts of tests and making them fail," the former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind told the BBC on Sunday.

In 2014, former US president Barack Obama ordered that efforts be stepped up to counter North Korea's missile capabilities with cyber attacks and electronic warfare. North Korea has seen a significant increase in failed launches in the years since, though there has been no official claim of the programme's success.

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Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/16/north-korea-makes-unsuccessful-missile-launch-day-massive-show/

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Obama done it!

[briv1016]

1. If that were true Donald would've already bragged about it in a tweet.

[still_one]

6. Exactly.

[harun]

12. +1

[dalton99a]

2. Definitely. A strong possibility is infected firmware

or intentionally marginal hardware imported from or though China

It was Obama who fingered North Korea as the culprit for the Sony hack though the use of malware embedded in their networks

[cstanleytech]

3. There are alot of could haves for why it went wrong and missle launches going wrong are

not unheard of.

[Throck]

4. Some 13 year old from Cleveland took out the missle with his Play Station.

[TeamPooka]

5. Thanks Obama. nt

[EarthFirst]

7. Who knows *what* to believe anymore...

Could be? Might be? Why not? Sure!

[msongs]

8. fake news. not even news. may have been thwarted by Mickey Mouse too lol nt

[LudwigPastorius]

9. Sounds too much like Hollywood.

*somewhere deep in a bunker at an undisclosed location*

"Okay soldier. Give me a realtime video feed of the launch complex."

"Yessir!"

"Looks like they're fueling that missile for a launch! ENHANCE!"

*monitor screen zooms in on the launchpad revealing a cryptic looking control panel*

"Good. That's a Taewong 4600. We can upload a trojan and blow the whole site."

"I'm on it, sir!"

"Hurry man, they could be seconds away."

"I've connected via one of our spy birds and have maximum throughput. Uploading now. All I've got to do is hit 'RETURN', sir"

"Send Kim a message he won't forget, soldier."

*intel officer presses a button and seconds later the missile explodes in a fiery blast*

"Score one for Freedom! Good work."

[FiveGoodMen]

13. You could definitely be a screenwriter.

[Downtown Hound]

10. Ever see the movie, "The Right Stuff?"

One of the more humorous scenes in the film revolves around the massive number of rocket launch failures the United States had in the early days of the space program. Rocket after rocket either blows up, comes back down to Earth, or simply fails to launch at all.

The point is is that we went through our own period of trial and error before getting it worked out. Is it possible that a U.S. cyber attack was responsible? Sure. It's also possible that advanced rocketry is just a complicated thing that any nation first attempting is going to have lots of failures, especially one as isolated as North Korea.

[treestar]

11. does NK have much in the way of computers?

I had been thinking that there must be some more sneaky and clever way to remove Kim Jong Un than nuking NK.

[Brother Buzz]

14. North Korea has computers

And I understand they pirate the internet from Seoul which is 95% blanketed with Broadband WiFi. Unfortunately, computer distribution in North Korea is so sparse I suspect a Stuxnet like computer worm worn't do much