14 DAY TRIAL // An update on the number of cyber experts North Korea has at its disposal reports that the communist state now relies on no less than 6,000 individuals for orchestrating cyber incidents.
This data comes from the Defense Ministry of South Korea, according to Associated Press. A 2013 report from the same source said that the cyber army of the communist state was composed of 3,000.
Cyber talent is highly rewarded in North Korea
There are no details on how this recent information was obtained, though, but the South claims that the cyber warriors in North Korea are trained for “paralyzing the South psychologically and materially.”
At least six cyber-attacks on South Korea have been attributed to the North, starting 2007, while numerous other attempts to compromise the computer networks of businesses and government agencies have been stifled before any damage could be done.
As far as the cyber elite used by the Hermit Kingdom to wreak online havoc is concerned, some sources previously said that their number in 2008 was 1,800 and that they were part of a secret division called Bureau 121.
They are very talented individuals, as the government selects them from the top 100 graduates of the University of Automation. They are considered the elite of the military and receive large rewards for their work, which is generally carried out from outside North Korea.
In some cases, the individuals are recruited as young as 17 and are sent to study in China and Russia. Older reports say that even primary school students are selected, if they show a particular inclination towards science and mathematics.
6,000 cyber warriors for a country with poor Internet connection
Their deeds have echoed in the news outlets all over the world, one of the most notorious operations being DarkSeoul, which operated against South Korea for at least four years.
According to a report from Symantec, the threat actor relied on a type of attack that wiped information from the computers of the targets (media organizations and banks), similar to the one carried out against Sony Pictures Entertainment in November 2014.
DarkSeoul also resorted to distributed denial-of-service attacks that were run on key historical dates, in reference to the Korean War (1950-1953).
Given the update on the number of cyber warriors it can use, North Korea is very likely to have the largest cyber army in the world. Despite this, Internet availability in the country remains sparse and the connections are routed through China; this is also the reason most cyber-attacks with North Korea at the helm are traced to machines in China and other countries.