[Column] Beware the cheap coder
The author is the general secretary of the Academy of National Intelligence and a former professor at the Graduate School of National Intelligence.
A North Korean defector residing in Seoul received an urgent call from his acquaintance back home who graduated from the Pyongyang Science and Technology Academy and was now based in China. He pleaded with him to arrange some contacts with IT companies in South Korea or get some work for him. He lost his job in China due to his reduced role from UN sanctions on North Korea, but could not return home due to the lockout from Covid-19.
There are an estimated 2,000 North Korean IT workers stranded in China and thousands around the world. They are barred from returning home under strict border rules aimed at preventing the inflow of the virus. But the dispatched North Korean workers had been loyal in returning earnings to their leader Kim Jong-un. Since they also must send some money to their families back home — and should pay for their own expenses living abroad — they desperately needed to work day and night.
Normally, IT workers are not associated with malicious cyber activities. But under the ever-tougher sanctions, North Koreans have to do anything that can earn money. When they got the money to send to the regime, they had to hack confidential information from South Korea and hand it over to the regime. That way, they have turned into slave-like cyber warriors for Pyongyang.
Professional hacking groups working for the Pyongyang regime mostly attack — or steal information from — security or intelligence agencies, defense companies, financial networks and energy infrastructure. North Korean IT workers acting as cyber soldiers are penetrating into the everyday lives of their southern compatriots dealing with business, healthcare, social media, sports and gaming.
Last year, a game operator in South Korea was arrested for distributing an automated hunt game program developed by a North Korean IT programmer and sharing some of the revenue with his North Korean counterpart. The program allows the user to obtain game items even without moving characters on the screen. Similar cases were reported in 2011 and 2016. It seems that North Koreans could not resist the temptation to take advantage of the huge popularity of game items in South Korea, whose market revenue nears a whopping 2 trillion won ($1.5 billion).
In December, the Yoon Suk Yeol administration issued a warning to public and private companies about inadvertently hiring North Korean IT workers. The act of assigning work to North Koreans for payment can impair corporate reputation and possibly violate the UN sanctions. In some cases, the act can be punished by domestic laws in South Korea. That’s why the government urged companies to pay special heed to the hiring of North Korean IT workers. What worries the government is the possibility of the money being used to develop nuclear weapons and missiles in North Korea. The government stopped short of specifying the expected damages to companies or society.
Based on the case of the hunt game program, we can assume the advantage and disadvantage of a South Korean company employing a North Korean programmer. When a game program development is assigned to a North Korean programmer, he or she can come up with a competitive program at just one third of the cost for a South Korean company. Communication is also easy as they use the same language.
But the price can be dear. A North Korean program with access to the South Korean company as a subcontractor can steal confidential information or contaminate the company’s computer system in return for ransom. Information on thousands of users of that program could end up in the hands of North Koreans or Chinese. A PC with the downloaded game could act as a zombie PC to carry out missions from Pyongyang remotely. A South Korean company could go down disgracefully while leaving major losses for the society.
In the advisory, the government laid out specific red flags South Korean companies must watch for. As the Korean proverb says, however, a dozen police officers cannot catch a burglar especially if he is well-planned and skilled. As North Korean IT workers are desperate, they may not be a match for complacent civil servants or other employees in the public sector.
North Korea’s cyberattack capabilities are among the top in the world. Despite the abundance of damages from cyberattacks from North Korea, I have never heard any news about the arrest of a North Korean perpetrator. Unless the CEO has a stern sense of security, North Korean cyberattack cannot be averted.
Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)