As a sysadmin that's pretty much my worst nightmare. I really feel for those trying to pick the pieces back up again after that.
Wow. this is one of the biggest instances of IT incompetence that I've heard of in recent years. Hosting a server farm without remote backups? Sound like the London Magnetic Tape Incident.
The LMTI: One employee was sent to the other end of London with the magnetic backup tapes every day. He got money to take a taxi, but saved it and took the tube. His favourite seat was right above one of the motors, where he sat the bag with the tapes on the floor for the journey. The tapes were just stored at the destination, and not checked in any way. Guess what they learned the first time they had to rely on those tapes?
Hmm a system that stored government documents caught fire and they have no backups? Hmm, this carries the same energy of registry offices catching fire "spontaneously" in the past.
Always have two backups in different places than the original. If not, the least you can do is have one backup copy. How does the government don't have such thing?
Perhaps contained evidence against the former PM who tried to do a military coup and this is the way of getting rid of it? Perhaps protecting co-conspirators if not the top guy.
At least they saved the Internet box. Otherwise, we'll have to bother the elders of the Internet again.
Yeah who needs proper DR. it's not like disasters ever happen.
This is a clear example where 'the cloud' really is a physical place.
Disaster Recovery Concepts:
Even though they historically used to have a great backup system for their historians and government records.
see link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritable_Records_of_the_Joseon_Dynasty
Weird how there is a rising MAGA party in KR and an aligned former pm who attempted a coup. What a weird coincidence.
Always backup!!! From the fire, I mean, place your safety first
saw a sticker recently that said "there is no cloud, just other people's computers"
It's too bad it wasn't a rain cloud or it would have destroyed the fire and not the other way around
Kein Backup, kein Mitleid!
Great talk that touches on this from CCC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dMzlw-qSZI
TLDR it was to destroy evidence the day before a government investigation.
So this is the "maintenance" the gov services are currently having.
You do know that there's two korean countries, right?
However, due to the system’s large-capacity, low-performance storage structure, no external backups were maintained — meaning all data has been permanently lost.
Why were there no backups? "Because there was a lot of data" isn't really an answer.
The G-Drive has been in use since 2018, requiring government officials to store all work documents in the cloud instead of on personal computers.
It is currently working to recover alternative data using any files saved locally on personal computers within the past month, along with emails, official documents and printed records.
Imagine being the employee who voilated work policy and saved stuff locally.
Sucks for most users, but i bet there's at least one person who is like "holy fuck I'm saved!" Because now he can blame the server destruction for why he doesn't have that big project done tomorrow
Trying to save the prior impeached president's ass.
That's gonna be an expensive lesson about the 3-2-1 strategy...
Damn isn't it a shame we lost the election results? Damn shame anyways the ballots from my district are fine.
Was it too expensive to have a backup in Busan?
I find this hard to believe honestly. how can so many people involved in the administration of this system not have some offsite backups.
dunno about this segment of the korean gov, but it just... seems implausible.
They really had only 1 location?? Really???
Why would you need a backup, it's in the cloud!
/s
They should have adhered to 3-2-1
Mr. Robot?
due to the system’s large-capacity, low-performance storage structure, no external backups were maintained
Oh man, thats terrifying. Critical systems running without a backup
The G-Drive has been in use since 2018, requiring government officials to store all work documents in the cloud instead of on personal computers
However, due to the system’s large-capacity, low-performance storage structure, no external backups were maintained
I'm equal parts exasperated and unsurprised because "automatic backups" were 100% part of the sales pitch to move everything to the cloud
This is actually kinda crazy. It just goes to show how a lot of infrastructure we take for granted is a lot more fragile than one would believe. Kinda concerning. At least this isn't technically critical infrastructure, I guess?
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