in The end it was a clerical error that made the Plan come to naught. Unknown tried in February 2016, from an account of the Bangladesh Bank Central of a billion dollars to withdraw. The hackers, however, “was attributed to the pulsation” instead of “Foundation” in a digital form, and this aroused distrust. In haste, the banks involved blocked the payments.
“But there were 81 million dollars already gone,” says Moonbeom Park. The 38-year-old South Korean has experienced hundreds of such attacks at close range. For twelve years he was fighting in Seoul against the government cyber army of the North.
at the end of February, he travelled in Switzerland, in order to keep the Swiss Cyber Security Days in Freiburg, a lecture. At the newly launched conference of the Swiss political, military and IT industry meet – in the morning, a Colonel for the new cyber course at the army weibelt, noon Hacker crack live, a car, in the evening, the organizers on the tables, cheese fondue for the more than 1000 participants, during the singing of the invited Jodelchors in Networking-babble.
the Park Nike trainers, fine eyeglass frame, boys face walking around after his presentation, between the hundreds of suits, and finally his Laptop in the cafeteria to expand. “Just call me Park – or Daniel, that’s my Western name!”, he says to anyone who speaks to him.
“Pass on, if you go home at night”
He asks not to start to call the name of his employer in public. This has its reasons: the Park know by heart, in which building in the capital Pyongyang, which a hacker is stationed group. How many specialists work there about. What time is the office hours. Of some opponent, he knows even the name. A polluted joke E-Mails from the North: “Park pass to reach him in his office viruses, if you go home after work!”
In the case of the Central Bank of Bangladesh was soon clear that Behind the attack were Kim Jong-us Hacker. The action marked a turning point. At that time, the world began to understand the public that the long-isolated dictatorship of North Korea had begun to attack the global financial system in a big way. A British Ex-intelligence officers told the New York Times that he expected that North Korea captured a niche Hacker a year up to a billion dollars.
experts have known for some time the danger of North Korean hackers out, at the latest since the attack on Sony Pictures in the fall of 2014. The film Studio wanted to bring the Satire “The Interview” in theaters, in which two US journalists to kill North Korean dictator. Shortly before the movie’s release, hackers leakten a mountain of Sony’s internal emails and documents, and destroyed, by the way, more than half of the Sony-Pictures-Computer-and -Laptops. For the Park and most of the other experts there is no doubt that The attack came from Pyongyang. (North Korea denies to have anything to do with an attack.)
North Korea uses only 1000 IP addresses
Moonbeom Parks narrative of North Korea’s cyber army begins much earlier, before 25 to 30 years, as the Russian instructors, according to Pyongyang traveled and started at a state University.
In North Korea served the Internet has always been mainly for military purposes; the population has no access to the network. The state uses only about 1,000 IP addresses – in Switzerland there are more than twenty million. That brings North Korea a strategic advantage: It offers hardly attack surface, but has a lot of destinations around the globe to choose from.
“North Korea hacked for three reasons,” says Park. Firstly, to collect information. Thus, it was possible one of the hacker groups in the year 2014, to loot the schemes of a South Korean nuclear power plant. Secondly, to hunt the Apostate. In December 2018, the steel of the North, the names of about 1000 Defectors. The attacker had grazed in a South Korean support center for political refugees a computer.
“The sanctions led to the North banks, to attack, to loot the money.”Moonbeom Park, South Korean hack
The third reason: money. The have a lot to do with the international sanctions regime, says Moonbeom Park. As the United Nations and the US, North Korea to 2016-sections more and more from the international trade, came the Regime is becoming stronger in financial distress. A Department for the revenue of the North Korean unity party is responsible, had been transformed therefore into a real hacker unit – and have since been commissioned to come via the Internet, to be cash equivalents.
the Park rattles a whole list of attacks: hacked ATMs in South Korea, plundered banks in more than a dozen countries, empty casinos in Eastern Europe, cleared online. And, more recently: exchanges for crypto currencies. In December 2017 looted North Korean hackers, the South Korean Bitcoin exchange Youbit, which was then bankrupt.
students practice computer infect
Parks Job is usually the body. He analyzed after an attack, the hacked computer to find out what exactly happened. Sometimes the Puzzle is simple, because the attackers are in a panic, fled, without their tracks. And sometimes it is unsolvable, because all the networks have been wiped out.
Despite the huge damage that the North is doing in the South, sees Park a positive side: “We have found so many vulnerabilities in our systems and eradicated.” Some of the attacks are harmless, sometimes only” North Korean students, who practice a computer-infected – homework-be it “to a certain extent. He learned the profession in a similar way: by trial and error. He grew up in the country, the parents were farmers, the rice cultivation, and honey bees are bred. The first Cyber-lessons he received from his brothers and friends. As a 19-Year-old he hacked an Internet service provider, because he had no money to pay for a regular subscription. His second attack was on the Central computer of a police station, whose Website it defaced, in order to prove to the authorities: I was here!
This action have earned him an arrest, which was only remained, therefore, without consequences, because in South Korea, in 1999, the Penetration in the computer systems not yet under penalty was made. But instead of the crime to drift away, studied the Park in Seoul, computer science. Still at the University, he was asked his Knowledge differently in the future: in the fight against the enemy in the North.
It does not stop, in spite of the peace process
A the end of this fight is in sight. Before the Park, grabs his Laptop, he says, he believe in the long-term reunification of the two Korea – “we eat the same food Kimchi”. But as soon as some optimists believed in is not going to go on. And even if the peace process will come forward, The cyber attacks would continue. To important and profitable they were for Kim’s Regime.
Park hopes that he will one day sit on his opponents from the North – and it was only to show you his attack pattern repeats and questions: “And, was I right?”
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 07.03.2019, 06:33 PM
