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Korean, American Hackers Have Busy Week
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2009-05-06
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There are two disturbing hacking-related stories circulating, one involving allegations North Korea has recruited hackers with the purpose of infiltrating US and South Korean networks, and another involving a prescription database breach in Virginia.
 | | Korean, American Hackers Have Busy Week |  |
Related? You'd probably have to be a pretty gifted conspiracy theorist to connect those dots, but have at it. In all likelihood, the events are merely simultaneous incidents.
JoongAng Daily, a South Korean English newspaper, cites shadowy "intelligence sources in Seoul" when it reports North Korea has set up a cyber warfare unit with the aim of disrupting US and South Korean networks.
The source also claims North Korea visits US military sites more frequently than any other country. This is news to many, including many security researchers and the US government, both of whom never fail to mention China as the apparent origin of attacks against US networks. Security researchers (perhaps more so than the government) are quick to concede origins can be spoofed.
Also tricky is linking hackers directly to a government, as this intelligence source has done, going so far as to say roughly 100 North Korean military hackers mainly seek to steal classified data, but "may spread computer viruses to disrupt the networks" when necessary.
In a probably not related story, Wikileaks, now the world's repository for leaked documents you're not supposed to see, reported the website for the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) displayed a ransom message that read:
"I have your shit! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password."
I'm going out on a limb and say that's not Korean English. The PMP is still down nearly a week later, so the threat appears to still be very serious-serious enough the FBI has gotten involved.
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SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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