South Korean Government Targeted By More Than 110000 Cyberattacks Over Past

North Korea has deployed six more patrol vessels near the sea border with South Korea as Pyongyang continues its campaign to invalidate the maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea.

Im Su-kyung, a member of the National Assembly’s Public Administration & Security committee, made the findings of the organisation’s report public on Friday. The figures do not include attempted hacks automatically filtered out by web security systems, nor attacks recorded by the Defense Ministry and Seoul’s National Intelligence Service.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was the most popular target, suffering 8,663 attacks.

But North Korean Embassy officials were upset when they learned of the seminars jointly organized with the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM), an Indonesian policy advocacy organization and South Korea’s Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. Last October, North Korea fired at balloons carrying leaflets, triggering a brief exchange of fire with South Korea.

However, analysts say this does not mean Pyongyang is not orchestrating cyber attacks against its southern neighbor. Since it was very likely that North Korea would not accept the invitation, there was some opposition inside the government to sending it. But we tried to send the letter anyway with the thought that we should do as much as possible, the government official said.

North Korea’s reticence is symptomatic of the recent freeze in Seoul-Pyongyang relations, and is a potential blow to the hopes of thousands of now elderly relatives who have not seen each other due to a national division cemented during the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea’s ambassador at-large, Ri Hung Sik, dismissed Kirby’s denouncements saying, “the reunion of these separate families… has nothing to do with Kirby”.

Japan’s point-person on the abduction issue, Shoichiro Ishikawa, told the council that acknowledging its misconduct was “the only way for (Pyongyang) to gain the chance of reconciliation with the global community”. North Korean hackers were also blamed for cyber attacks on the South in 2011 and 2009.

According to Alan Woodward, visiting professor at Surrey University and an advisor to Europol on cybercrime, attribution is inherently hard with cyberattacks.

The United States “will not be spared of severe judgment”, the article added.

“When a sudden order to initiate a quasi-state of war came down, the atmosphere on the frontline [inter-Korean border] became quite tense”, a military source from South Pyongan Province reported to Daily NK on September 17th.