There's evidence that North Korea was attempting ambitious attacks on private sector entities as well.
Early results were alarming: As early as 2004, North Korea "reportedly gained access to 33 of 80 South Korean military wireless communication networks " in 2006, "a n attack on the US State Department originating in the East Asia-Pacific region coincided with US-North Korea negotiations over the regime’s nuclear missile testing." To that end, North Korea established a group of hackers within its military special forces architecture, called Unit 121, that is trained in a hotel in eastern China. " Cyber warfare allows North Korea to leverage the Internet's inherent flaws for offensive purposes while maintaining its defenses, primarily via air-gapping its most critical networks from the outside world," the report says.
It would also signal an increased willingness for North Korea to deploy its developing cyberoffensive capabilities against American targets.Īn August 2014 report from Hewitt Packard Security Research explained Pyongyang's longstanding policy of attempting to integrate cyberattacks into its doctrine of "asymmetrical warfare" - namely, North Korea's attempts at closing the defense gap with its more conventionally capable enemies, like South Korea and the US, in whichever ways it can.
"It would be a watershed moment in how the world handles cyber policy and reaction." "If it was North Korea, these attacks against Sony would indicate that foreign powers are going beyond the traditional information-stealing attacks to enforcing their own law against American companies via what we would consider cyber terrorism," Aitel told Business Insider by email. It often indicates a user profile.įor the past several years, states have started to compromise the computer systems of rival governments and private companies to further political or strategic aims: think China's infiltration of computers at The New York Times in response to a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning reports in 2012 on the private wealth of the country's top leadership, or Russia's "cyber-invasion" of Estonia in 2007.īut according to Dave Aitel, a former NSA research scientist and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Immunity, the severity of the Sony attack, along with its nakedly political motives, would put the incident in its own unique category assuming it was North Korea's handiwork. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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