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posted by martyb on Sunday May 31 2015, @02:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-are-doomed! dept.

Prof. Kim Heung-Kwang has told BBC Click that North Korea has trained 6,000 military hackers capable of attacks that could destroy critical infrastructure or even kill people:

For 20 years Prof Kim taught computer science at Hamheung Computer Technology University, before escaping the country in 2004. While Prof Kim did not teach hacking techniques, his former students have gone on to form North Korea's notorious hacking unit Bureau 121. The bureau, which is widely believed to operate out of China, has been credited for numerous hacks. Many of the attacks are said to have been aimed specifically at South Korean infrastructure, such as power plants and banks.

Speaking at a location just outside the South Korean capital, Prof Kim told the BBC he has regular contact with key figures within the country who have intimate knowledge of the military's cyber operation. "The size of the cyber-attack agency has increased significantly, and now has approximately 6,000 people," he said. He estimated that between 10% to 20% of the regime's military budget is being spent on online operations. "The reason North Korea has been harassing other countries is to demonstrate that North Korea has cyber war capacity," he added. "Their cyber-attacks could have similar impacts as military attacks, killing people and destroying cities."

Speaking more specifically, Prof Kim said North Korea was building its own malware based on Stuxnet - a hack attack, widely attributed to the US and Israel, which struck Iranian nuclear centrifuges before being discovered in 2010. "[A Stuxnet-style attack] designed to destroy a city has been prepared by North Korea and is a feasible threat," Prof Kim said. Earlier this year, the South Korean government blamed North Korea for a hack on the country's Hydro and Nuclear Power Plant. "Although the nuclear plant was not compromised by the attack, if the computer system controlling the nuclear reactor was compromised, the consequences could be unimaginably severe and cause extensive casualties," Prof Kim said.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2015, @08:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2015, @08:54PM (#190492)

    It's not about being cool, new, and wow at all, its all about being *lazy*.
    It's about not having to go outside and climb that hill to see how much water is in the tank.

  • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday June 01 2015, @09:22AM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday June 01 2015, @09:22AM (#190623) Journal

    Lazy/ efficient, tomato / tomato.

    Well I for one quite like not having to pay people to schlep around doing stupid menial tasks like walking up hills to check water levels. And because the computers can give the water company live, accurate readings from the water tank and even calculate accurate estimates of forthcoming demand from our customers, they can manage production more efficiently, not producing more water than is actually needed, driving down costs again.

    Sometimes, those cost savings actually make it to the customers too.