Where Did North Korea's Hacker Army Come From?

Surprises

from the not-exactly-a-tech-hotzone dept

In the past few months, North Korea has banned mobile phones, but finally got around to setting up their very first internet portal. From this info, you might think that North Korea is a bit out of it when it comes to communications technology. Not so, claims South Korea, who is now accusing North Korea of training a hacker army of 500 to wage cyber-warfare against the US. South Korea claims that the North Korean hacking army went through five whole years of hacker training, where they repeatedly broke into computer systems in the US, South Korea and Japan. It all seems a bit strange. For years we’ve been hearing about the increasing threat of cyberwarfare, and nothing ever seems to come of it. So far, it’s always seemed like organized crime attacks (for profit) were much more advanced than any organized cyber “warfare” efforts. It’s certainly possible that there’s are great armies of hackers employed by various governments, but you wonder how effective they really would be in terms of causing national security level problems.