When North Korean "hackers" multiply cyber-attacks
North Korean hackers in particular attacked Google Chrome.
© REUTERS / Kacper Pempel / Illustration / File Photo
Text by: Nicolas Rocca Follow
3 min
North Korean "hackers" are increasingly talked about.
Last month, the United States claims it arrested three of them for embezzling $ 1.3 billion in cryptocurrency.
But the "hackers" also targeted pharmaceutical companies producing vaccines, the WHO, Google Chrome, or a few years ago the Central Bank of Bangladesh.
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From our correspondent in Seoul,
Simon Choï is a
South Korean
“
counter-hacker
” who closely follows the online activities of his colleagues in the North.
Since 2008 and his military service, this thirty-something with square glasses began to look into the cybercrime of the Communist State, of which he analyzed a large part of the attacks.
Since then, Simon Choï, founded the NGO Issue Makers and he even managed to chat online with one of these
hackers
in the service of the regime.
The
hackers
would be according to the latest official data from South Koreans around 1700, partly in Pyongyang, in the North Korean capital but also in major Chinese cities near the border such as Shenyang.
They are divided into different groups that work for defense ministries or intelligence services.
The best known of them is Lazarus who is believed to be responsible for numerous cryptocurrency embezzlements.
"
They have made enormous progress
"
If the skills of these
hackers
remain limited compared to those of other countries, Simon Choï considers their determination impressive and that their capacities have evolved.
“
They've made tremendous progress over the past ten years, they've even managed to attack Google Chrome, and that takes a lot of capacity.
They learned American and Chinese methods and adapted them to their needs.
They are very good at spotting weaknesses in their targets in order to attack them afterwards.
In this area, they are among the best in the world,
”he said.
And how do the evolutions in the skills of these
hackers materialize
?
Through an evolution of objectives, these cybersoldiers were an intelligence and communication weapon in the service of the regime.
The targets were therefore rather South Korean officials from the Unification Ministry or UN officials.
But it has also become a weapon for financing the regime, bypassing the United Nations sanctions which are hitting very hard an economy already in difficulty.
According to the UN, $ 316 million in crypto-currencies were allegedly embezzled last year, in particular to finance the regime's ballistic program.
And North Korea doesn't stop there.
According to Simon Choï, they also target weapons manufacturers as well as data from nuclear power plants.
►
To read also:
How Pyongyang finances its weapons program thanks to cyber attacks
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