North Korea hackers blamed for bank crash in South
A South Korean woman looks at her bankbook in front of automated-teller machines of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, or NongHyup, in Seoul on May 3, 2011. North Korea was to blame for a cyber-attack that paralysed operations at one of South Korea’s largest banks last month, prosecutors said.
North Korean hackers are being blamed for crashing the servers of the Nonghyup Bank and preventing millions of South Koreans from accessing their credit cards and ATM accounts for several days.
The Apr. 12 intrusion is the latest in a series of cyber attacks — termed "internet warfare by Seoul — thought to have originated from the secretive state.
Prosecutors in Seoul said a "meticulously prepared and executed" attack by the same group that hacked into South Korean government and business websites in 2009 and March this year.
The Unification Ministry called the attack a "provocation upon our society."
"North Korea should put a stop to this cyber terror immediately," Ministry of Unification spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said Wednesday, JoongAng Daily reports.
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade rebuked North Korea on Wednesday for hacking into the servers of Nonghyup Bank and jeopardizing thousands of accounts.
"North Korea’s hacking is an illegal act as per international law," an official at the Foreign Ministry told JoongAng Daily. "It is a basic rule in international law that to violate the profits of another country is illegal."
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