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Seoul faces growing challenges in cyber warfare
By Shin Hyon-hee
Seoul faces daunting challenges in countering North Korea’s apparently growing cyber warfare capabilities that nabbed a fresh spotlight in the wake of a massive collapse of websites and computer networks on Wednesday.
The government, military and private sector have been beefing up their chiefly defensive capabilities to safeguard the country’s heavily intertwined computer networks from outside intrusions.
While probes are under way to determine the latest attackers, some officials and experts pinpointed North Korea as the likely suspect in light of past cases and their patterns with apparently higher proficiency.
Pyongyang’s increasingly sophisticated and diversifying hacking skills pose greater risks to South Korea, one of the world’s most wired countries with high broadband speeds and penetration levels, they say.
“North Korea seems to set its sight on asymmetrical warfare tactics including cyber capabilities,” said Yang Uk, a senior researcher at Korea Defense and Security Forum in Seoul.
“It makes sense because that way it can inflict greater damage, economic and social, at relatively low costs. That’s why they prefer this and they will continue to do so.”
The communist state has been focusing on boosting asymmetrical warfare capabilities in part because it will unlikely win a conventional war with the South armed with far more advanced weapons.
Another advantage may be the difficulty to track down the origin of cyber attacks, which will make a way out, Yang said.
Pyongyang is believed to have had jammed global positioning system signals on South Korean civilian flights and ships from last April to May and hacked government and corporate websites and commercial banking systems in 2009, 2011 and 2012.
As North Korea’s cyber threats surge in size and power, the South Korean military set up a special cyber command to devise strategies and steer related operations in 2010. It opened a cyber warfare school last year in partnership with private Korea University, taking about 30 new students every year.
The Defense Ministry said last June it was seeking to elevate the rank of its cyber commander to major general from brigadier general and double the number of staff to 1,000. It newly installed a cyber protection policy team in 2011.
Yet some experts are calling for additional measures such as regular training courses with the military and a sharp expansion in the specialist team and budget.
North Korea is known to operate a special elite unit of around 3,000 hackers and cyber warfare experts under the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a prime intelligence body.
Lee Dong-hoon, a professor at the Korea University Graduate School of Information Security, said last June that the heavily militarized country runs a 3,000-strong special cyber army under the direct control of leader Kim Jong-un.
That gives it the world’s third-largest electronic warfare resources after Russia and the United States.
Shin In-gyun, president of non-profit Korea Defence Network, has said Pyongyang has been delving into electronic warfare since 1981 and now has as many as 5,000 specialists in operation, whereas the South only began devising its own tactics three to four years ago and currently deploys around 250 experts.
U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. James Thurman said in October the regime had a “significant” and growing cyber warfare capability. He said last March it was training an increasing number of “sophisticated computer hackers” to launch cyber infiltrations and attacks.
“We should build a stronger multilayer system to prevent future attacks and facilitate restoration in case of urgency,” said Kim Jae-yeop, a security expert at Hannam University.
“Despite the defensive nature of our capabilities, we should also not focus on coping with attacks but also be capable of striking back when the culprit becomes clear. We should crank up our own efforts and cooperation with the U.S.”
(heeshin@heraldcorp.com)
