http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200407/200407130036.html July 13,2004 The National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed Tuesday that major government organizations and private sectors have been exposed to hacker attacks that came from China and declared the attack a ˇ°threat to national security.ˇ± As a result, the NIS warned the public to protect their computers from hacking. The NIS also said that based on their judgment, the attack was not carried out by individuals but involved an organization of some size, they will collaborate with other government agencies such as the Foreign Ministry, Information and Communications Ministry, Defense Security Command, and National Police Agency to actively cope with it. Through official press releases, the NIS said that the two hacking programs, Peep Trojan and its variation Bacdoor Revacc, have broken into 211 computers in 10 government agencies. Among those computers attacked are 77 computers in the National Maritime Police Agency, 69 at the National Assembly, 50 in the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, nine in the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, one each in the Agency for Defense Development, Air Force Academy, and the Maritime Ministry, the Small and Medium Business Administration, the Unification Education Center, and the Korea Astronomy Observatory. In the National Assembly, information on 122 people, including former and incumbent lawmakers and parliamentary workers, were stolen due to negligent management. Sixty-seven computers at private companies, universities, and media firms have also been infiltrated and information of some reporters has been stolen, causing serious damage. The NIS said that so far a total of 278 computers have been affected by the hacker attack, which was confirmed to have been launched from China. Since the NIS announced on June 19 that a hacker attacked 116 computers, including 64 computers in the public sector and 52 computers in the private sector, an additional 162 computers have been attacked in some 20 days. The government assesses that since more and more organizations -- not only security-related institutes and major companies but also universities and media firms -- have been affected, there is high possibility that a lot of important government information may have been drained out. It has been learned, however, that the NIS has had difficulty in assessing the amount of information stolen due to the lack of cooperation of related government agencies and technological limitations. The NIS said, ˇ°We think that the hacker attack would have a serious effect on national security. Thus, the entire public should be on an alert and strengthen their own computer security to prevent important national data and secret industrial data from being stolen.ˇ± In particular, because it was confirmed that the attack was launched from China, the NIS has asked China to cooperate with investigations through the Foreign Ministry while the Police Agency is trying to carry out joint investigations with Interpol and Chinese police to crack down on hacker groups. _________________________________________ Help InfoSec News with a donation: http://www.c4i.org/donation.html
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