South Korea network attack 'a computer virus'

    > What kind of computer and computer education resources are there in North Korea?
    > It's hard to imagine them pulling this off without some outside help.

There's plenty of free resources online: recordings from security conferences posted on video sharing sites (like Youtube); infosec mailing lists; published hacks and so on. Plus hacking is as much a state of mind as it is an education. To pull off attacks like those you'd need individuals who are adept finding weaknesses for themselves rather than just following guides that they've been taught.

    > It's also hard to imagine anyone except individuals or small collectives would help North Korea
    > pull this off at this time.

From what I've read, they do have some military-governed teams of hackers. If the attacks originated from North Korea, then it would have been a military operation.

North Korea has money for such projects it appears, they are higher priority than feeding people.

For example their nuke program is estimated at $1.5bn http://nwww.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20130212000939

I would have thought buying expliots on the open market was good value.