Some 1,000 fleeing North Koreans to South victims of hack

According to the unification ministry of South Korea, anonymous hackers, who acquired illegitimate admission into the database of certain resettlement agency, leaked personal information belonging to almost 1,000 North Koreans understood to have deserted their country and taken shelter in South Korea. The ministry got to know about the leak following detection of malware seemingly planted onto one desktop placed at one North Gyeongsang province's centre.

The ministry operates 25 institutes across the country of which Hana centre like the rest assists some 32,000 defectors to settle their lives inside the more wealthy and democratic South Korea even as they are provided legal, medical and employment facilities. As accords to the ministry, in the past week it found the names, addresses and birth dates stolen off 997 defectors via one PC contaminated with malware in the Hana centre, an agency inside Gumi a southern city.

The ministry further indicated that having recognized the probability of the PC being hacked, it conducted one on-site investigation 19th December through joint tasks with the Hana centre as well as the government of the Gyeongsang province and confirmed there was malware on the PC. www.outlookindia.com posted this, December 28, 2018.

Meanwhile according to the government of North Korea, it is not familiar with the defected citizens' identities. It considers a few as "missing persons" alternatively even regarded as officially dead.

As probes separately by the police and unification ministry are on the ministry has promised about putting its best efforts towards prevention of such a happening again. Moreover according to the ministry, it was on job of informing the impacted defectors while no reports about adverse effects had come in due to the security breach.

Simon Choi a North Korean cyber warfare expert says the hacking of Hana centre mayn't be its sole one. For, one particular hacking group of North Korea, which chiefly attacks the defector community of North Korea, reportedly is known to have attempted a breach at the Hana centre in 2017. It isn't still rightly evident whether any hacking gang from North Korea is behind the latest assault, Choi adds.

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