NORTH KOREA’S CYBERATTACKS

HACKING HIGHLIGHTS DANGERS TO SEOUL OF NORTH'S CYBER-WARRIORS

Ju-min Park

Reuters, March 21, 2013

SEOUL, March 21 (Reuters) - A hacking attack that brought down three South Korean broadcasters and two major banks has been identified by most commentators as North Korea flexing its muscles as military tensions on the divided peninsula sky-rocket.

Officials in Seoul traced Wednesday's breach to a server in China, a country that has been used by North Korean hackers in the past. That reinforces the vulnerability of South Korea, the world's most wired economy, to unconventional warfare.

China's Foreign Ministry said that hacking attacks were a "global problem", anonymous and cross-border.

"Hackers often use the IP addresses of other countries to carry out their attacks," ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters.

One government official in Seoul directly blamed Pyongyang, although police and the country's computer crime agency said it would take months to firmly establish responsibility.

Jang Se-yul, a former North Korean soldier who went to a military college in Pyongyang to groom hackers and who defected to the South in 2008, estimates the North has some 3,000 troops, including 600 professional hackers, in its cyber-unit.

Jang's alma mater, the Mirim University, is now called the University of Automation. It was set up in the late 1980s to help North Korea's military automation and has a special class in professional hacking.

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