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Seoul prosecutors have fingered the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea’s top intelligence agency, as the perpetrator of last month’s hacking of the bank of the South Korean agricultural cooperative. However, doubts are being raised as to how the authorities could so accurately pinpoint the attack and they have fallen back on familiar “sources and methods” concerns to deflect questions. North Korea, as might be expected, has denied the allegations.
The incident has brought to the fore the scale of North Korean efforts which are said to involve 1,000 or more hackers, with capabilities rivaling those of the CIA. Whatever the hype, there seems to be a spate of cyber attacks on analysts involved in research on North Korea to which we can personally attest. The attacks reputedly emanate from servers in China run by North Korean operatives.
Inevitably someone would figure how to make money off this skullduggery. The Chosun Ilbo reports that police are looking into claims that South Korean online gamers profited from a hacking program developed by the North Koreans that they purchased in China. The program provided its users an advantage in the Lineage game by automating aspects of monster hunting and killing thereby facilitating the accrual of special weaponry and game money. The game money could then be turned into the real thing via exchange with other gamers.
