Team America tries to crash Little Rocket Man's Joanap botnet from within, warns owners of infected boxes

Uncle Sam has infiltrated and somewhat knackered what it claims is a North Korea-operated botnet of hijacked Microsoft Windows computers. US prosecutors reckon Park Jin Hyok – a suspected Sony Pictures and WannaCry hacker living in Kim Jong Un's hermit nation – built and managed the Joanap botnet, a globe-spanning network of …

[FozzyBear]

So lonely, so lonely

Firstly major spelling mistake in the sub heading it's

So RONERY. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEaKX9YYHiQ

Also couldn't we just send Hans to sort out rocket man.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good article, well written

I still think Kim Jong-un gave Trump a USB stick with an infected version of MS-Golf '98 on it.

Very good game, you try on office computer...

[joke]

[Mark 85]

Defeated by antivirus... simple solution...

“While the Joanap botnet was identified years ago and can be defeated with antivirus software, we identified numerous unprotected computers that hosted the malware underlying the botnet.

So there's a bunch of idiots running Windows without AV or at least turning on Windows Defender? Unbelievable.

[iron]

Re: Defeated by antivirus... simple solution...

It's worse than that, they also have SMB ports open to the outside world!

[Peter Ford]

That explains a lot

"the Feds can alert people who have been infected, by monitoring the IP addresses of the systems joining the network. Folks were, or will be, tipped off via their ISPs"

So that's what all the robot calls about my IP address being compromised are about...

[JimC]

Re: That explains a lot

Well yes, my first reaction to a communication claiming to be from the FBI about my box having been compromised would be "Yeah right, pull the other one".

[druck]

Re: That explains a lot

They need to send a SWAT team in first to convince you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Running since 2009?

A botnet that's been running for a decade is quite an achievement, and surely a record.

[JohnFen]

Re: Running since 2009?

I think there are a few that are older, but they're mostly used for sending spam. Pushdo comes to mind -- IIRC, that's from around 2005.

[King Bob]

Stop using Windows. Problem solved. The only time using Windows worked out positively is when the Iranians were stupid enough to use it at their nuclear facilities.

[[e-mail]]

AFOSI?

Am I the only one wondering if the rest of America's military forces somehow escaped getting caught up in this, or do the various Arms take it in turns to assist the Feds in such fun projects?

[Anonymous Coward]

who did what? your out of your mind.

I hate NK as much as anyone else, but Wannacry is all on the NSA, their tools, they could have shut it down day one, but didn't- to keep their hacking tools "secret" LOL. And the Sony hack was an inside job by disgruntled employees.

[Alistair]

I'm wondering if the military types found it active on their hardware, and brought in the FBI to help with the legal bits, and turned it into a 'lets do the right thing .....'

Okay maybe 'lets see if we can steal someone else's military secrets while we're at it.....'

[Claverhouse]

We Rule The World !

Apart from all the self-congratulatory carpet-munching American agencies deliver, with important words like 'state-sponsored' or 'terrorist', it would be nice to see some of their evidence that links such hacking directly to the North Korean government.

And in the linked article: '"We have a long memory and are fully prepared for the day when he will be arrested," said a DoJ representative, adding: "It is one thing to name a group and quite another to say we know who did it and name them. The message is: you can't hide from us."

Sounds even better in Stalin's voice...