The United States and North Korea are never in agreement with each other. They are in a dispute about South Korea, Pyongyang's nuclearization and arms proliferation, and many more. There have been tensions between them in the land, sea, and air, and they might as well take their dispute to the Internet.

According to an article by al Jazeera, two North Korean defectors-- trainer Kim Heung-kwang and hacker Jang Se-yul -- have warned about North Korea's concentrated efforts to bolster its cyberwarfare capabilities. Kim said that North Korea has procured more than 3,000 hackers serving in the North and abroad in China, Russia and elsewhere. Kim said students who graduate at the top of their class are enrolled in the elite high-middle Schools in Pyongyang, and then at North Korea's top technology institutes and universities. After that, students are sent to China or Russia for about one year to solidify their knowledge of hacking and other technical skills. After the overseas training, they are placed in various warfare units to serve as "cyberwarriors."

The U.S. government has no such program for training kids to become hackers to pursue the government's international agenda. But in the event it does so, it could recruit the kids participating at the Defcon Kids conference. Since 1993, hackers have been holding DEF CON, the world's largest annual hacker gathering, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Many of these hackers have become computer security white hats bent on defending companies and homes against cyber attacks. In fact, DEFCON founder Jeff Moss, known by his hacker handle as Dark Tangent, is on a White House homeland defense council and heads security for the agency in charge of Internet addresses. For the first time, children ages 8 to 16 are being invited to the conference to learn how to become hackers. The 1st Annual DEFCON Kids will be August 6-7, 2011 at the Rio in Las Vegas.

At the DEFCON Kids, there will be a classroom for kids to participate in demos and workshops, such as learning how to open Master locks, Google Hacking, making Electronics, Social Engineering, coding in Scratch and Communicating in Code. There will be a workroom for kids to participate in hacking activities anytime throughout the two days, including a Codebreaking Museum, a Makerbot and the Hardware Hacking Station. A major emphasis of the event is the use of hacking skills for positive purposes. The children will be encouraged to put their knowledge to good use and are discouraged from breaking into web sites and stealing money and data.

Hacking a serious problem

There's no news so far as to whether North Korea and the al Qaeda have taken the Internet arena to provoke the United States. But the United States' ally, South Korea, has already blamed its communist neighbor for cyber attacks against the Korean Military Academy's computer system, a major South Korea bank and other incidents.

A report by NATO, a powerful military alliance of countries from North America and Europe, noted that the Internet has made state and society much more vulnerable to attacks such as computer intrusions, scrambling software programs, undetected insiders within computer firewalls, or cyber terrorists.

Organization WikiLeaks has breached and published, among other things, Pentagon documents on the Afghan war and the Iraq War and 250,000 confidential US diplomatic cables on diplomats' candid assessments of terrorist threats and the behaviour of world leaders. LulzSec has hacked Web sites like the U.S. Senate, the Central Intelligence Agency, and affiliates of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. LulzSec has also hacked the websites of the governments of United Kingdom, Brazil and the Peru.

NATO Parliamentary Assembly General Rapporteur Lord Jopling warned that Anonymous and other hackers could potentially hack into sensitive government, military, and corporate files. "From what we know today, terrorist groups such as al Qaeda do not yet have the capability to carry out such attacks. In the future, however, organized crime and hacker groups could sell their services to terrorist groups."

NATO said in early June that its defence ministers have approved a revised NATO Policy on Cyber Defence -- a policy that sets out a clear vision for efforts in cyber defence throughout the member countries. The revised policy will offer a coordinated approach to cyber defence across the Alliance with a focus on preventing cyber attacks and building resilience.

At the end of May, the United States Government adopted a strategy that will classify major cyber attacks as "acts of war."

There has been many strikes made (CIA, FBI, U.S. Senate) that clearly resemble an act of war. Even NATO confirmed last week that a NATO related website last week was breached by hackers.

However, the problem with cyber warfare, we don't know who the enemies are. Among the many hacks, only LulzSec confirms its hacking attacks. However, despite the group's publicity loving stunts, most of its members have not been caught.

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