The North Korean intelligence agency was behind the cyber attack on a South Korean bank's computer system last month, South Korean prosecutors said Tuesday. One of the Internet protocol addresses used to break into the Nonghyup network was the same as one used two months ago for the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that originated from North Korea, the prosecution said.
Prosecutors alleged North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, in charge of espionage operations against Seoul, hacked into the computer system of an agricultural cooperative, Nonghyup, and deleted the stored files on the bank's servers.
Nonghyup, the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, is a federation of agricultural cooperatives that delivers supply, processing, marketing and banking services through more than 4.000 branches.
The hackers used the laptop belonging to a Nonghyup subcontractor after turning it into a "zombie computer" for the attack, the prosecutor's office said.
"This was an unprecedented act of cyber-terror involving North Korea," Kim Young-dae, a senior prosecutor from the Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office in charge of the investigation, said during a news conference. The office said the hacking technique used in the April 12 cyber attack of Nonghyup was similar to the process used by North Korea in cyberattacks on South Korean government and business websites in 2009.
