South Korean Police Call The Lazarus Group North Korea Retas 61 Institutions, Including Eight News Agencys

Illustration. (Unsplash/Towfiqu barbhuiya)

JAKARTA - The National Police Agency (NPA) said on Tuesday it had confirmed North Korea's hacking group "Lazarus" had so far attacked more than 200 computers in 61 Ginseng State agencies.

At a press conference at its Seoul head office, NPA said 207 computers on eight news outlets and 53 other offices had been hacked by the group.

South Korean police have discovered North Korean hackers have targeted vulnerabilities in certain personal authentication software with security firewalls, which are widely used in South Korea to access private banking and government websites containing personal data.

Hackers exploit vulnerabilities to install software that automatically grows viruses on computers, according to police, in what is referred to as an "watery hole" attack.

"There are about 10 million computers in South Korea that install the same software," the authorities said.

Hackers have a plot set from 2021 to infiltrate INISAFE, South Korea's personal authentication software developer, by studying software weaknesses and developing their own malware, police said.

The NPA said it had managed to find signs of Lazarus' activity on the South Korean network, first blocking further access they were working with other agencies.

Separately, authorities reminded the public to update their computer cybersecurity software, as North Korean hackers continue to improve their defenses.

It is known that Lazarus is accused by the US Government of stealing huge amounts of cyber currency through online games. The US Treasury Department said on April 6, hackers stole USD 620 million from the non-exchangeable online game token-based, Axie Infinity, in one of the biggest cyber theft cases of 2022.

Last February, the South Korean government imposed its first independent sanction against North Korea in the field of banned cyber activity.

Four North Korean hackers and seven groups, including Lazarus, are accused of disbursing funds to Pyongyang for the Kim Jong-un regime's weapons program.

On the same day, the US National Intelligence Agency, the US National Security Agency and the FBI issued joint security inputs against North Korea's cybercrimes, saying hackers were trying to get cryptocurrencies through malware attacks using fake domains.