Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 December 28

= December 28 =

Cutting North Korea off the Internet permanently
I thought the US controlled the Internet at the top level.

1) Is this still true ?

2) If ordinary North Koreans have no access to the Internet, and it's solely used by hackers to damage Sony, etc., there would seem to be justification to cut NK off permanently.

3) I can see how this might cause worry in other nations, that the US might cut them off, too, so perhaps some kind of international body should decide the issue. Is there any such body with jurisdiction over the Internet ?

4) Can NK bypass any restrictions and go through China ? StuRat (talk) 21:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)


 * No one controls the internet. Server Administrators can block ip addresses originating in North Korea (and any server that has not blocked north korea) and this must be done on a case by case basis. However, there is a chokepoint between the majority of the internet and north korea, all of the north korea traffic passes through China, perhaps one single server. Never the less, your claim that North Korea solely uses the internet for malicious hacking is unsupported. Secondly, it is important to understand that the internet can only be controlled if it becomes centralized like a star network, a healthy internet is decentralized like a  fully connected mesh  so that if one hub fails, information can be rerouted until the failure is replaced.Fractal618 (talk) 17:03, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA or ARPA) developed the ARPANET that was a predecessor to the existing Internet, but the Internet is now international. The United States has less control over the Internet today than Jimbo Wales has over Wikipedia.  What little central control there is over the Internet has to do with the allocation of addresses, technical standards, and a few other matters.  As Fractal618 notes, the Internet is multiply connected.  What little control there is over North Korea's connectivity is in China, not through the US.  There isn't really any international body that can deal centrally with rogue-state use of the Internet.  At the same time, while there is very little access to the Internet by "ordinary" North Koreans, some wealthy North Koreans have access to the Internet, not for hacking.  Also, if there is any US plan for dealing with potential North Korean abuse of the Internet, it should be and probably is classified, possibly also involving malware.  (See Stuxnet to illustrate that this is not merely hypothetical.)  Robert McClenon (talk) 05:27, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * But, as you said, there are choke points. It seems a plan should at least be in place to cut off NK, should they decide to go all out and just do as much damage as they possibly can. StuRat (talk) 18:08, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * If there is a 'choke point', it is going to be between NK and China, and accordingly the Chinese would need to cooperate. And if they were motivated to do that, they would have more effective ways of putting pressure on NK anyway. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:13, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I would think they would be obligated to prevent ongoing criminal activity, if they could stop it, under international treaties. StuRat (talk) 18:16, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't know of any such treaties. A lot of countries condone things that are considered "ongoing criminal activity" in other countries, so the situation is not simply black-and-white. Also, NK could easily and quite cheaply buy alternative connections onto the net. You don't need a huge bandwidth to control such attacks - if you need massive compute power or bandwidth downstream, you can easily rent servers anywhere, or even buy compromised botnets. Per John Gilmore, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." That is part of the beauty of the internet. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:02, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * There are many sanctions in place against NK, and I would expect some of those to exclude providing them with computer services or technology. As for routing around problem areas, you are assuming a nation with a strong network, while I would expect NK's to be the bare minimum.  StuRat (talk) 19:11, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't know how authoritative SanctionWiki is, but a quick grep does not find the terms "computer" or "internet" mentioned. Anyways, while such a block would inconvenience business, it would do essentially nothing to prevent against cyberattacks. You don't need a strong network to route around cut-off points for a simple control connection, as you only need bandwidth for basic command line access. You can use any communication channel to bring large malware payloads to any place on the planet - in a pinch, you can mail a USB stick, or send it by Avian Carrier.   --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:21, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * That would require having a NK agent at the other end, making the operation a lot riskier. StuRat (talk) 19:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It's academic. Suppose you successfully cut them off from the Internet. All they need is a cellphone and someplace close enough to the border with South Korea to pick up a cell tower and they're back online...OK, so you cut off cellular services and every WiFi node within 30 miles of the border. They don't need much bandwidth to hack - so they'd just get 56000 baud modems and landline phones. So you'd have to cut off all communications. Then they just buy an innocuous-looking office in some other flea-bitten country that doesn't give a damn and set their hackers up there. It's actually better if they hack from inside their own country because it's easier to monitor what they are doing and verify who is really responsible. If the hacks came from a low-rent office in Syria, Libia, Namibia, etc it would take much more effort to figure out who was truly responsible. SteveBaker (talk) 19:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Cannot backup bcdedit in Windows 7
Hi there. I have to remove one entry in the start menu in my Windows 7. That second OS has been wiped out while I tried to install the newest version of Ubuntu and it is the first one on the menu, so every time I boot my computer I need to wait until what I think some people call GRUB (although I am not sure) and use the downward arrow and the Return button to start my Windows 7, otherwise it will default to the first, now non-existing choice.

I use this website to guide me. It highly recommends to create a backup first and I am trying.

I use this command: bcdedit /export "" Pretty much as the website recommends.

I get an error:

''The store export operation has failed. Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.''

I don't know what kind of resources the error message refers to, but if this is memory, I have 16 GB of RAM and 111 GB of empty disk space on C:\. What else?

Googling shows that it a known bug. Various posts show that it is not easy to find a solution. Any suggestions? Thanks, ---AboutFace 22 (talk) 22:39, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * How much free space is on the partition where the BCD file is stored (the hidden System Reserved partition/recovery partition in a normal install, or may be the EFI System Partition in some EFI cases or probably something weird in esoteric installs like those that came with laptops)? Nil Einne (talk) 18:28, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for delay. As I mention already it is 111 GB. The hardware is a Dell rack mount R5400. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AboutFace 22 (talk • contribs) 23:12, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you may have missed my point. I'm not asking how much space there is on the C drive. I'm asking how much space there is on the partition the BCD file is stored. AFAIK the vast majority of Windows installs (including pretty much any default install), this will not be on the C drive. Normally it will be stored in the System Reserved partition which is not mounted, and in fact difficult to mount by in Windows. It's possible it's stored in the EFI System Partition in EFI cases, but I'm less sure of this. Have you checked and made sure the BCD file is stored in your C drive? Nil Einne (talk) 14:34, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks like I was somewhat mistaken, seems the BCD file is stored on the C drive in BIOS configs by default. But it is stored in the EFI system partition in EFI cases . I'm not really sure what OEMs normally do, in any case, I'd strongly recommend you make sure the BCD file is actually stored on your C drive. It'll probably pay to take a look at any other partitions as well, just to see if there is anything there (it's always possible the BCD file you're looking at even if it is on the C drive is the wrong one). Also from what I can tell the BCD /export function supports paths instead of just filenames. I'm not sure where it tries to export by default, but at least if you have problems, I'd strongly recommend you try to export to a location which should be fine (i.e. where you'll have the right access positions). I'd personally specify a fully qualified path rather than using enviromental variables. E.g. C:\Users\Whatever instead of %HOMEPATH%, and remember to either deal with or better avoid white spaces. I wouldn't use the root directory, it will probably be fine if you're running the command prompt in administrator mode, but just in case, better to use somewhere else. (I presume you are running the command prompt in admin mode. And since we talking Vista onwards, I mean admininstator mode, not simply a user who's an administrator, considering UAC.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:46, 2 January 2015 (UTC)