South Korean Police Arrest 33 Hackers for Defrauding Online Poker Players

According to the South Korean police, 33 hackers have been arrested over accusations that they defrauded poker players off their hard-earned money amounting to 55 Million won ($45,265), on the Internet, as reported by Recentpoker on June 28, 2010.

The leaders of the hackers' gang were 2 men, Yu aged 30 and Kim aged 29. They have been accused of making illicit profits.

The Cyber Terror Response Center in South Korea's Gyeonggi region stated that the criminal group employed 11,000 robot PCs for breaking into 700 PC rooms all over South Korea, as reported by Recentpoker.

Moreover, the police informed that Yu purchased a software called "Netbot Attacker" from a criminal, who practiced hacking in China, during November 2009. Subsequently, he sold replicas of that software to Kim and others. The group invaded the PC rooms' (Internet cafes') administrative systems and planted a PC virus on the machines so that they could view the opponent players' hands, as reported by Joongangdaily on June 28, 2010.

Commenting on the underground assaults proliferated in bulk, Kim Ki-dong (Captain of the Cyber Terror Response Center) stated that some 2,000 PCs were used in the DDoS attacks of 2009. However, in case all the PCs that the gang compromised were utilized for the DDoS attack then it could have resulted in devastating damage, as reported by Joongangdaliy on June 28, 2010.

Besides, the police say that hacking of above kind has been going on in South Korea for some time because the sale of this as well as similar software applications has been vehemently going on across the country. The software programs are made up-to-date very fast so that security applications find it hard to maintain pace with their proliferation.

Nonetheless, because of the initiatives of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, and Police, such thefts have become drastically costly. Accordingly, the black market rates have increased 500% because of the police busting of the thieveries. Currently, the Police in recommend South Korea's Internet poker players that they should exercise extreme caution particularly while playing in public places for keeping at bay such unfamiliar malevolent programs and their attacks.

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» SPAMfighter News - 7/8/2010