Cyberwarfare unit operating out of North Korea?

Intelligence services in Seoul are claiming that North Korea has set up a specialist cyberwarfare brigade, designed to use technology usually used by hackers to steal information from enemy countries and disrupt rival military networks in South Korea and the United States.

The claims, which have been published in the South Korean press and picked up by news agencies worldwide, say that the North Korean People’s Army have recruited approximately 100 hackers to break into US and South Korean computers, download classified information and simulate combat situations.

According to an unnamed source, “when necessary, [the North Korean hackers] may spread computer viruses to disrupt the networks.”

Many of the hackers are said to be graduates from a military academy in North Korea’s capital city, Pyongyang.

It is, of course, very hard to confirm the veracity…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.