Did North Korean spooks provide an online gambling system?

The South Korean cyber-security community has made the startling claim that North Korea’s general intelligence bureau produced and circulated a program that enables users to operate illegal gambling sites.

According to the community, a program for operating illegal gambling servers has the IP address of the North’s general intelligence bureau hidden within it, and was discovered on a website that world cyber security experts launched late last month to check malign codes after sharing various computer programs and files. The title of the program is “Poker game server.”

Reporting on the claims, the publication Donga.com notes that an analysis of the program by white-hat hackers in South Korea revealed that “175.45.178.○○,” the IP address of the North’s general intelligence bureau, was concealed in the program. The North’s general intelligence bureau oversees the North’s cyber-attacks on broadcasters and banks in the South, the publication claims.

“The program is designed to allow the user to operate various online gambling sites using credit cards, including Seven Poker, and Badugi. It enables the user to operate a server in the Korean language and instantly check the data of all people logged in, the amount of jackpots at stake, and total income, among other information,” Donga.com reports, adding that it has been operational for the past two years.

“Under any scenarios, chances are high that the North’s general intelligence bureau would have earned large amounts of money in South Korea by operating gambling sites by itself or selling the program to multiple South Korean organized crime rings,” one white-hat hacker opined to the publication.

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