Yes, unfortunately, the title is real. But that’s not the point of this news story. Besides North Korea actually having hackers, the shocking news is what the hackers did. The NK hackers managed to plant cyber warfare type software to steal crucial national security and defense information from South Korea. As with any major, national crippling, cyber attack, the awesome people at Kaspersky Lab were called in to save the day. It is the people at Kaspersky Lab, that after analyzing the information were shocked to say that the attack points to North Korea.
Kaspersky experts say that this is the first time a cyber attack is pointed directly at North Korea, which in itself is shocking. The information gathered was handed over to the Korean Information Security Agency and Computer Emergency Response team in Seoul. It is believed that the hackers were using landlines in North Korea from bordering cities and villages near the China and North Korea border to connect to the internet in their Cyber Campaing called “Kimsuky”. Yes, they really called it “Kimsuky”.
All that is believed to of been stolen are Hangul word processor (HWP) documents, which are used widely by South Korean officials, as well as information from “ThinkTanks” such as the Sejong Institute, the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses and supporters of Korean unification. That seems to have been the information stolen, although it is unclear what was stolen, according to South Korean officials.