Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk@private> http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/05/28/200405280004.asp shinyb@private 2004.05.28 North Korea is operating a computer-hacking military unit to collect secret information on South Korea, a top military official in Seoul said yesterday. Speaking in a conference on protection of defense information, Defense Security Command commander Song Young-keun unveiled the North Korean military's hacking into computer networks of South Korea's major state organizations. "Considering intelligence we gathered, the North is operating a hacking unit under the direct instruction of Kim Jong-il," Lt. Gen. Song said in the statement. "They are stepping up cyber-terror abilities, such as collection of our information through hacking of our agencies and institutions." The DSC commander said in May that the North had annually trained about 100 computer hackers to strengthen its cyber-terror capability against South Korea. The South Korean military intelligence unit has set up a counter-cyber terrorism investigative team to check general computer viruses and hacking threats. Quoting unnamed DSC officials, Yonhap News Agency said North Korean military authorities have provided intensive and rigorous training of computer-related skills to some college graduates, and they are assigned to the military unit under the control of the Korean People's Army, the communist state's military forces. Their tasks are to get into the computer networks run by South Korean government agencies and research institutes, and retrieve classified information from them. One of their assignments is also to attack the computer systems, Yonhap said. The communist North is also using about 26 Internet Web sites directly run by it or other pro-Pyongyang organizations to promote the regime and other political propaganda. The DSC also said that through the Web sites, the North sets forth guidelines for its spy agents operating abroad. *==============================================================* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ---------------------------------------------------------------- C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org ================================================================ Help C4I.org with a donation: http://www.c4i.org/contribute.html *==============================================================* _________________________________________ ISN mailing list Sponsored by: OSVDB.org
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