Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

All those people who got irked at NongHyup Bank a few weeks ago need to re-direct their anger at North Korea (or at least add them to their list).

The bureau, which consists of six departments and handles operations against South Korea, is believed to have masterminded the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan in March last year.

According to prosecutors, North Korean hackers planted a virus in a laptop owned by an IBM Korea employee identified as Han last September. After finding out that Han was in charge of the bank's computer network maintenance at subcontractor IBM Korea, the hackers stole Internet Protocol addresses to break into the bank network. They activated the virus and paralyzed the bank servers on April 12, three days before North Korean founder Kim Il-sung's birthday.

The National Intelligence Service identified 201 port numbers which became zombie computers after hacker attacks last September, and found that one of them matched Han's laptop, the prosecutors' office said.

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/05/04/2011050400576.html

From what I understand, the attack came from Chinese territory. Any counter-attack would have to be in some other form because NK doesn't have more than about 300,000 computers, so doesn't offer the number of targets the South does. NongHyup was chosen partly because it has a branch in every 동 or 면, so a strike would affect the entire country.

Naturally, someone in the opposition party said, "Where's the proof it was NK?" I used the occasion to teach the expression 'useful idiot'.