North Korea is advancing on the front lines of cyberwarfare, analysts said, stealing billions of dollars, and presenting a clearer and more present danger than its banned weapons programs.
Pyongyang is under multiple international sanctions over its atomic bomb and ballistic missile programs, which have seen rapid progress under North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
However, while the world’s diplomatic focus has been on its nuclear ambitions, Pyongyang has been quietly and steadily building up its cybercapabilities.
Photo: AFP
Analysts say that its army of thousands of well-trained hackers are proving to be just as dangerous.
“North Korea’s nuclear and military programs are long-term threats, but its cyberthreats are immediate, realistic threats,” said Oh Il-seok, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul.
Pyongyang’s cyberwarfare abilities first came to global prominence in 2014 when it was accused of hacking into Sony Pictures Entertainment as revenge for The Interview, a satirical film that mocked Kim.
The attack resulted in the posting of several unreleased movies online, as well as a vast trove of confidential documents.
Since then the North has been blamed for a number of high-profile cyberattacks, including an US$81 million heist from the Bangladesh central bank, as well as the 2017 WannaCry global ransomware attack, which infected about 300,000 computers in 150 nations.
Pyongyang has denied any involvement, describing US allegations over WannaCry as “absurd.”
“We have nothing to do with cyberattacks,” a spokesman for the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
However, the US Department of Justice in February indicted three North Koreans on charges of “participating in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy to conduct a series of destructive cyberattacks.”
In its Annual Threat Assessment Report, Washington acknowledged that Pyongyang “probably possesses the expertise to cause temporary, limited disruptions of some critical infrastructure networks” across the US.
The North’s cyberprogram “poses a growing espionage, theft and attack threat,” the document from the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence said.
It accused Pyongyang of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges, “probably to fund government priorities, such as its nuclear and missile programs.”
North Korea’s cyberprogram dates to at least the middle of the 1990s, when then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il reportedly said that “all wars in future years will be computer wars.”
Today Pyongyang’s 6,000-strong cyberwarfare unit, known as Bureau 121, operates from several countries, including Belarus, China, India, Malaysia and Russia, a US military report published in July last year said.
Scott Jarkoff of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike rates Bureau 121 highly.
“They are extremely sophisticated, dedicated, and capable of conducting advanced attacks,” Jarkoff said.
Bureau 121 recruits are trained in coding languages and operating systems at special establishments such as Mirim University, said former student Jang Se-yul, who defected in 2007.
Now known as the University of Automation, it takes in only 100 students a year from among the North’s highest-scoring schoolchildren.
“We were taught that we had to be prepared against America’s cyberwarfare capabilities,” Jang told reporters. “Ultimately, we were taught that we had to develop our own hacking programs, since attacking the enemy’s operating system is the best defense.”
Cyberwarfare is particularly appealing for small, poor countries like the North that are “outgunned in terms of equipment such as planes, tanks and other modern weapons systems,” Stimson Center researcher Martyn Williams said. “Hacking just requires a computer and Internet connection.”
Most state-sponsored hacking groups are mainly used for espionage purposes, but experts say that North Korea is unusual in also deploying its cybercapabilities for financial gain.
Pyongyang has blockaded itself to protect against the COVID-19 pandemic, adding to the pressure on its economy, and has for years sought to earn foreign currency by multiple means.
“Stealing it is a lot faster and potentially more lucrative than doing business, especially if you have skilled hackers,” Williams said.
The February US indictment accused the three North Koreans of stealing more than US$1.3 billion of money and cryptocurrency from financial institutions and companies.
When it was issued, US Assistant Attorney General John Demers called North Korea’s operatives “the world’s leading bank robbers,” adding that they were “using keyboards rather than guns, stealing digital wallets of cryptocurrency instead of sacks of cash.”
The rise of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have presented hackers globally with a whole new range of increasingly lucrative targets.
In addition, their decentralized networks were a particular bonus for the North, offering a way to circumvent financial sanctions, Jarkoff said.
“This allows North Korea to easily launder money back into the country, outside the control of the global banking system,” he said. “Cryptocurrency is attractive because it is uncontrolled, borderless and relatively anonymous.”
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