North Korea’s army of hackers

The UPI news agency reported this week that North Korea has an army of 6,800 computer and IT specialists engaged in everything from hacking and mayhem making to selling software and operating (unidentified) online gambling websites.

The news agency was reporting on an address by former Korea National Police University researcher Yoo Dong-ryol to the annual security conference of South Korea’s military establishment in Seoul this week.

Yoo claimed that South Korea’s fractious and economically challenged neighbour earns the equivalent of $864 million annually through its often covert online activity, which includes “developing and selling illegal gambling programs, operating gambling sites using names of foreign nationals and stealing cyber money through hacking.”

The researcher claimed that North Korean agents recruit nationals in other Asian nations to operate its illegal online gambling sites on a profit sharing basis

This is not the first time experts in the South have flagged North Korea’s nefarious online activity; there have been several recent media and national intelligence claims of extensive and questionable North Korean cyber activity carried out internationally by platoons of IT specialists

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