Kim Chaek University of Technology Code Challenges

It’s pretty well known that North Korean students write some decent code and have won some competitions against other colleges: https://www.mic.com/articles/186412/north-korean-college-coders-beat-stanford-university-in-a-2016-competition-heres-why-that-matters

The other day some North Korean social media accounts started tweeting out the following link showing their standings online: https://www.codechef.com/ratings/long-challenge

I started looking into it more and it looks like at least the for some of the online competitions it’s pretty well known that users are cheating on their submissions:

1. https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/43880

2. https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/14150

3. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-North-Koreans-doing-so-well-on-CodeChef-Do-they-even-have-proper-access-to-the-Internet

Finally Something New

It’s been a while since something new has appeared in North Korea’s IP space. I have no idea what this is but I’m glad there’s something new finally. Googling the error does produce some interesting results but no real clues as far as I can tell.

PS2 Silver Star

One thing that I’ve been researching lately is the link between STS Tech Service and Silverstar Japan/Magnolia. I’ve found some listings for different computer games and PS2 games

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://tk-nz.game.coocan.jp/gamedatabase/software/DB_SNC2_PS22005.html&prev=search

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/games/gsnews/0202/04/news06.html&prev=search