A series of attacks on government agencies, TV and banking networks convinced Seoul to develop an elite cadre of experts to defend the country
A t the fortified border between South and North Korea, students on a computer hacking course are instructed to peer northwards across a strip of empty land toward the enemy state.
“Our country is divided and we are at war, but you can’t see that division in cyberspace,” said Kim Jin-seok. “So we take them to see it in person.”
Kim manages a program called Best of the Best, the goal of which is to train the next generation of so-called white-hat hackers, netizens with elite cybersecurity skills who are able and willing to defend South Korea against malicious hacking attacks, many of which are believed to come from North Korea.
Such skills are in high demand in South Korea. The country is officially at war with the North and while the two sides only rarely exchange bombs or bullets, they are locked in a round-the-clock battle in cyberspace. As North Korea builds its nuclear and missile strength, it is also advancing its ability to launch disruptive attacks online.
With the North’s economy increasingly strangled by international sanctions, the country has almost no tax base and an expensive nuclear weapons program, meaning it has to seek alternative, often illegal, ways of generating income. North Korean hackers were linked to the theft of $81m from Bangladesh’s central bank in March 2016, and in December the US Trump administration identified North Korea as the culprit behind the WannaCry cyber-attack, which in May caused millions in losses. North Korea has denied involvement.
North Korean hackers have been linked to leaks of credit card information and illegal ATM withdrawals in South Korea. “There are thousands of cyber-attacks in South Korea every day and most of them never get reported on the news,” Kim said. “Information security is the basis of economic development.”
The government-funded counter-hacker training program was conceived in 2010 when North Korean hackers were switching gears from only targeting South Korean government entities to attacking private sector bodies.
