Experts are suggesting the in-flight failure and crash of the missile launched by North Korea on Wednesday could have been the result of a "left-of-launch" attack by the United States. While these failures may have been the result of poor engineering on the part of the North Koreans, they may also have been deliberately brought down by the US.
[...] In 2014, then-President Barack Obama authorized additional research into "left-of-launch" efforts to neutralize North Korean missiles, as opposed to the more traditional deployment of anti-missile systems to destroy inbound weapons. "Left-of-launch" strategies involve electromagnetic propagation or cyber attacks against missiles immediately after launch, including through infected electronics aboard the weapon that confuse its command and control or targeting systems.
[...] Part of the beauty of a "left-of-launch" attack, said Lance Gatling, a defence analyst and president of Tokyo-based Nexial Research Inc, is that the North Koreans cannot be sure that any imported electronics have not been deliberately permitted to evade sanctions because they are infected with malware. Similarly, when a launch fails they are also unable to determine what brought the missile down.
Previously: North Korean Missiles and What the US is Doing About It
Related Stories
North Korea Launches Missiles, Land in Japanese Waters
North Korea has launched four ballistic missiles towards the Sea of Japan.
Three of them fell into Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) after flying some 1,000km (620 miles), in what PM Shinzo Abe called a "new stage of threat".
They were fired from the Tongchang-ri region, near the North's border with China, the South Korean military said.
The type of missile is unclear but the North is banned from any missile or nuclear tests by the UN.
The United States' Secret Cyberwar Against North Korean Missiles
The U.S. has been operating a "Stuxnet"-like program against North Korea to hinder its ability to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads:
Three years ago, President Barack Obama ordered Pentagon officials to step up their cyber and electronic strikes against North Korea's missile program in hopes of sabotaging test launches in their opening seconds.
Soon a large number of the North's military rockets began to explode, veer off course, disintegrate in midair and plunge into the sea. Advocates of such efforts say they believe that targeted attacks have given American antimissile defenses a new edge and delayed by several years the day when North Korea will be able to threaten American cities with nuclear weapons launched atop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But other experts have grown increasingly skeptical of the new approach, arguing that manufacturing errors, disgruntled insiders and sheer incompetence can also send missiles awry. Over the past eight months, they note, the North has managed to successfully launch three medium-range rockets. And Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, now claims his country is in "the final stage in preparations" for the inaugural test of his intercontinental missiles — perhaps a bluff, perhaps not.
An examination of the Pentagon's disruption effort, based on interviews with officials of the Obama and Trump administrations as well as a review of extensive but obscure public records, found that the United States still does not have the ability to effectively counter the North Korean nuclear and missile programs. Those threats are far more resilient than many experts thought, The New York Times's reporting found, and pose such a danger that Mr. Obama, as he left office, warned President Trump they were likely to be the most urgent problem he would confront.
Additional articles about the NYT investigation and "left-of-launch" strikes.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday April 07 2017, @12:28AM (1 child)
That's what happens when you go Akamai.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @02:22AM
No... They shop at Radio Shack for the electronics and Estes Industries for the rocket parts.
(Score: 5, Informative) by butthurt on Friday April 07 2017, @12:40AM (3 children)
This reminds me of the story which goes: a gas pipeline was built in the USSR, using electronic chips imported from the USA; the chips were designed to fail, which they did, resulting in a huge explosion.
https://sofrep.com/7999/the-myth-of-the-cia-and-the-trans-siberian-pipeline-explosion/ [sofrep.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage [wikipedia.org]
http://www.zdnet.com/article/us-software-blew-up-russian-gas-pipeline/ [zdnet.com] (this one doesn't question the story)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 07 2017, @07:04AM (2 children)
Butthurt, do you read these links you so love to pile on?
Your second link pretty much puts the lie to the other two.
Kinda the way I feel about the left-of-launch theory.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by butthurt on Friday April 07 2017, @07:46AM (1 child)
I wrote "dubious" in the subject. I assume you didn't notice it.
> Your second link pretty much puts the lie to the other two.
The first two are critical of the story; the third, as I wrote, is not. Forgive me for presenting conflicting information and expecting you to make up your own mind about it.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 07 2017, @04:13PM
see signature \/
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 07 2017, @01:37AM (9 children)
This sounds like a misinformation campaign to me. "Those crazy gooks can't even build a good missile, but we're going to make them think that it's our fault that the missiles fall out of the sky. Instead of engineering the defects out of their missiles, they'll waste resources trying to figure out how we're fekkin' with their missiles. Actually, we're just fekkin' with their minds!"
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Funny) by bob_super on Friday April 07 2017, @01:47AM
It is a LOL attack, after all.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday April 07 2017, @02:15AM (4 children)
Fine by me. I'd do the exact same to them actually; layer on layer on layer of deception and frustration. We cannot let that fat sack of shit succeed in a launch, and this is both the gentlest and most deniable way to stop it from happening.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @02:25AM (2 children)
He looks like the North Korean version of Colonel Sanders, waiting to see him in an ad for Korean Fried Chicken.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday April 07 2017, @02:31AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday April 07 2017, @08:29AM
free tour of the factory if you do ask (hey, maybe that's where Saddam's 'losing soccer team shredder ended up...)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @02:38AM
Well, rather than subterfuge relating to the electronics NK buys for their weapons programs, we could go direct to the problem and somehow infect the luxury comestibles and spirits that their leadership imports...use something that takes awhile to work in case there are food testers that eat everything first.
Even spreading this rumor might cause some mischief?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @03:26AM (2 children)
Thanks to snowden we already know that the NSA intercepts comms equipment en route from warehouses to customers and adds their own backdoors.
It is no stretch to think they would do the same to shipments destined for the DPRK.
DPRK nukes are the single greatest near term threat, more so than Iran's nukes ever were.
Of course we are spending billions of dollars trying to fuck it up in every way possible.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by butthurt on Friday April 07 2017, @08:36AM (1 child)
> It is no stretch to think [the NSA] would do the same to shipments destined for the DPRK.
It's a certainty that they'd like to do so. That they have the means is more doubtful. Mr. Snowden told us about tampering of equipment shipped by Cisco, which is based in the United States.
I found a 2003 report, with information from 1993:
According to U.S. and South Korean government sources, the Pyongyang Semiconductor Factory produces electronic components for missiles. [...] Pyongyang's technological capabilities in this area are relatively backward. According to defector Kim Myŏng Ch'ŏl, North Korea was procuring integrated circuits from the former Soviet Union, later Russia, and Japan to be used in rockets, tanks, and submarines while he worked at the Man'gyŏngdae Jewel Processing Factory from 1986 to 1993.
-- http://www.nti.org/learn/facilities/190/ [nti.org]
I should think that the NSA has less ability to intercept packages sent from Russia or Japan, as compared to what it does in its home country. Obviously my source may be outdated. China now has a robust electronics industry, and there too I wouldn't count on the NSA being able to tamper with packages. It's possible that, anticipating such mischief, the DPRK might send an emissary to purchase and pick up critical components.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Friday April 07 2017, @07:52PM
Considering they aimed some missiles at Japan, it wouldn't surprise me if Japan shipped them some crummy parts.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Friday April 07 2017, @01:20PM (3 children)
OK, that explains what the story is about. But how is 'left-of-launch' supposed to be parsed?
Of course, it could just be a meaningless sequence of symbols, just like they could equally have called it a ‘Squodgidoodles’ attack. But the term looks like it should mean something!
‘Left’ could mean the opposite of right, I suppose. Is there some special significance to the spatial orientation of how these missiles are launched that I should know about? Or it could be as in ‘left behind’, but that seems to make even less grammatical or semantic sense!
Am I missing something obvious here, or is the term as meaningless as it seems?
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 07 2017, @04:11PM (1 child)
I guess North Korea is west of the U.S. so countering the missile at its launch site is considered West/Left? As opposed to intercepting it in-flight, which apparently usually happens during the descent phase, which over California could be considered "East"?
Or maybe this is a "right-vs-left" thing involving testosterone where hacking the missile instead of shooting it down is considered unsporting? Hence "left" instead of "right" (/correct)?
Either way it's a dumb name.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday April 07 2017, @05:31PM
I thought it was because a sabotage before launch, on a traditional western left-to-right timeline, would be on the left side of the countdown.
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Friday April 07 2017, @05:47PM
OK, that explains what the story is about. But how is 'left-of-launch' supposed to be parsed?
I've found an article from a year ago [freebeacon.com] that gives a plausible origin for the term.
If there's a timeline of events where time increases in the right-hand direction, then an attack that occurs prior to the time of launch would be located to the left of the launch event on the timeline.
Left-of-launch would therefore be anything prior to the launch, right-of-launch would be anything after the launch.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Friday April 07 2017, @03:28PM
That's not "beautiful". If North Korea can't trust its imports, it will make the components itself. Don't think they can't. And when they build that capability, they will still have missiles, but be yet another step further from the global economy.
If your goal is to make North Korea a peaceful participant in international politics, rather than an unhinged recluse, this is the exact opposite of what you should do. They must be made dependent on trustworthy imports from their enemies. Only then will it become more costly to threaten those that stand against them than it is to seek peace.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?