Hackin'

Even as Guccifer goes on a tear, releasing Hova's credit reports and Hillary Clinton's emails, our friends in South Korea are having some computer problems of their own. Earlier today (in the middle of the afternoon, Seoul-time), computer networks at two of the country's banks and three TV stations shut down out of the blue, in what looks like the work of a malicious virus. That'll ruin an IT Department's day, all right.

The BBC reports:

"Staff at the three broadcasters said their computers crashed and could not be restarted, with screens simply displaying an error message, although they have continued to make television broadcasts, our correspondent said.

There were also reports of skulls popping up on some computer screens, which could indicate that hackers had installed malicious code in the networks, the Korean Internet Security Agency said."

A Defense spokesman told the BBC it was too early to point fingers: "We do not rule out the possibility of North Korea being involved, but it's premature to say so." (Just last week, actually, North Korea accused the U.S. of attacking its very, very limited Internet capabilities.) The Guardian says:

"Warnings reportedly appeared on some computer screens from a previously unknown group calling itself the 'WhoisTeam', showing skulls and a message stating it was only the beginning of 'our movement'."

But South Korea's rowdy northern neighbor is blamed for attacks in 2009 and 2011 and tensions are running high right now, so we're just surprised the hack didn't look like this:

(Know Your Meme)

Artist's rendering of Samsung HQ. (Photo: flickr.com/adpowers)

Here's a little anecdote to throw in the face of any "brogrammer" who gets a little too self-congratulatory about his, like, totally hardcore partying, dude. Apparently, South Korean Samsung employees party so hard that the corporate overlords have had to step in.

The Next Web reports the company has launched an offensive against binge drinking. Samsung has also "banned employees from forcing others to drink, where employees would be told to take drinks down in 'one shot' or forced to drink as a punishment."

Who knew Samsung HQ was so similar to a fraternity house during rush week? 

But like a bunch of college administrators wielding double-secret probation citations, the higher-ups are now encouraging employees to "organise more formal dinner parties or even meet on the tennis court" as opposed to burning through bottles of booze during staff dinners. Even though some of us would MUCH rather genuflect to the porcelain god than spend 10 minutes playing tennis.

The campaign against drinking isn't the only attempt to stifle epidemic levels of cardiovascular disease:

Over the past year, the company removed ashtrays from its buildings, reportedly going as far as to threaten employees that if they didn’t quit they may find it harder to get promoted within the company.

Uh, there was still a place where it was legal to smoke inside?