Re:North Korea's 6000-man army of hackers come into their own
by rtpg on Monday October 16, 2017 @12:57AM
(#15480932)
Gold farming? Hacking mobile games (and their payment systems)?
I'm also a bit confused, but there are ways to turn "game accounts" into cash in a lot of spaces....
Kinda feel like intelligence officials are not exactly at the beck and call of the ESA.
Re:North Korea's 6000-man army of hackers come into their own
by rl3 on Monday October 16, 2017 @01:08AM
(#15480965)
>... Hacking mobile games (and their payment systems)?
Good point. Add social games to that as well. It's probably easier to pull off shady activity when targeting a sea of shady activity in the first place.
>Kinda feel like intelligence officials are not exactly at the beck and call of the ESA.
DHS and State do tow that line, however. Intellectual property and anti-piracy matters are a non-trivial component of U.S. foreign policy these days.
How does "online video game cracking" even compare to the other items listed?
Most titles are cracked by elite teams of reverse engineers who are mostly located in Western countries, and they do it for free.
All I can figure is they're providing cracking support to street-level piracy operations that primarily deal with heavily localized software or games that the mainstream scene wouldn't normally touch. Perhaps the author was referring to the sale of cheats, or even real money trading in MMO games.
Whichever the case, I find the mention odd given it has no further explanation. It almost sounds like a nod to special interests, except there's no telltale mention of film piracy beyond the Sony affair.