South Korea and Japan yesterday vowed to work closely with the US to combat cybercrime, after Seoul blamed North Korea for a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures.
South Korea said it would share with Washington information “related to the cyberattack on Sony,” which it said bore all the hallmarks of an onslaught on its own banks and media agencies by the North last year.
Sony canceled the Christmas day release of The Interview, a madcap comedy about a CIA plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, after anonymous hackers invoked the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in threatening cinemas screening the film.
“We express deep regret and condemn such North Korean activities, as they seriously undermine the openness and security of cyberspace and they constitute a crime that caused property losses,” South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
In a statement, it also noted “the similarities between the attacks on Sony Pictures and those against South Korean banks and others in March last year.”
A spokesman for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters that “the Japanese government is closely communicating with the United States and supporting its approach on this issue,” without directly referencing North Korea.
“Cyberattacking is a very significant problem concerning the national security, and the Japanese government strongly condemns the acts of hacking,” the spokesman added.
An official investigation by South Korea blamed a cyberattack last year which completely shut down the networks of key South Korean TV broadcasters KBS, MBC and YTN, and crippled operations at three banks on North Korea’s military intelligence agency.
Access records and the malicious codes used in the attack pointed to North Korea’s military Reconnaissance General Bureau, the Korea Internet and Security Agency said, calling it a “premeditated, well-planned cyberattack by North Korea.”
Korea University Graduate School of Information Security professor Lim Jong-in said North Korea has created its own army of cyberexperts, about 1,000 of which work in China, who can “turn into hackers at a moment’s notice and mount attacks.”
“With 6,000 hackers under its cyberwarfare command, it is counted as one of the world’s top five countries in terms of cyberwarfare capabilities. It selects some 300 students and raises them as elite cyberwarriors every year,” Lim told reporters.
“The North is one of the world’s least wired states and therefore, it is quite safe from online counter-attacks,” he added.
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