Reports indicate that unknown hackers leaked almost 1,000 personal details of North Korean Defectors.
The South Korean Unification Ministry said that the details were stolen from a resettlement agency database through a malware-infected computer.
They stated the attack was carried by an email message received from an internal organization email address, and out of database of 30,000 records less than 1,000 were stolen by the malware.
They refused to comment so far on who is standing behind this attack and whether it is North Korea but said that the investigation is still ongoing and the results will be published when they are done.
Are there spies sitting in South Korea, working in local organisations and executing cyber attacks against them ? time will tell.
During the recent years, national country elections are focusing the attention on the cyber community because in every country there are people/organizations who claim that cyber-attacks are impacting the elections.
We have seen governments in North and South America dealing with cyber threats during elections. We have also seen countries in Asia and now a small country in the Middle east fighting cyber-attacks during elections.
Israel is known worldwide as country of experts when it comes to security and cyber security, so it was very surprising for many people to hear that the head of the secret services in Israel was talking publicly, stating that there is an impending cyber-attack against Israel from a specific country and that it is going to change the results of the elections and there is no way to deal with such an attack.
Many eyebrows were raised all over the world hearing this. The heads of the secret services rarely appear in public to give speeches.
Another unusual event happened the next day when the secret service itself sent a press release stating that they can handle any attack if and when it will happen in order to keep the integrity of the elections safe.
But it didn’t end there. Israel decided to censor which country the secret service was referring to. The press decided he was talking about Russia. Russia from the other side, hurried to go public and announce they are not related to it and they do not know anything about it and people just stop reading the fake news in the press. But that doesn’t mean much coming from Russia; they never admitted anything related to cybercrime even when actual spies were caught in action. The response is always the same.
Both China and the USA were mentioned as possible threats to the Israeli elections. China is a long-known player with high capabilities and abilities to launch and execute sophisticated cyber campaigns, but in this case it’s more interesting to see the USA’s name appearing.
Israel and the USA are considered to be close allies, but today security experts believe that the USA was actively involved in different cyber campaigns during the last elections that took place during 2015,. The USA tried to influence the general population to favor leaders that are positioned more closely to the Obama administration and its opinions.
And of course, there are all the usual suspects: countries surrounding Israel that might want to interfere with the results of the elections.
So, you wonder who is it that Israel is so afraid of ?
If you dig deeper, you will find out that the head of the israeli secret service talked several times about the dangers china investments posses to Israel.
There are several months before the elections in Israel will take place and we will continue follow and monitor cyber security issues developing around it. It seems that Israel’s elections are getting attention from many cyber organizations that have an interest in making plays during these days.
That’s it for this time. Stay safe and see you at the next time.
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