Unimaginable Capability: North Korean hackers await order to destroy South Korea

North Korean hackers have increased their capabilities to an unimaginable level and are poised to make South Korea plunge into total chaos, asserts a military computer expert who fled the Kim Jong-il regime in 2004, according to the channel ABC News.

What North Korean hackers "have been able to do in South Korea is beyond imagination," said Jang Se-yul, a computer science expert who fled North Korea, referring to the theft last year of classified intelligence documents , which included sensitive information on the joint military strategy of Seoul and Washington, according to ABC News quoted by the RT.

The largest North Korean cyber attack was carried out in September 2016, when the internal network of the South Korean military command was infected by a computer virus. The South Korean Ministry of Defense confirmed the information only last May. During the attack, about 235 gigabytes of military data was stolen, equivalent to 15 million pages of documents.

North Korean hackers were able to insert malicious code into the software provided by the South Korean Army's computer security company, said Lee Cheol-hee, a lawyer for the Democratic Party of South Korea.

Ready to act

"Pyongyang was preparing for a massive cyber attack since the 1990s," said Jang Se-yul. The North Koreans "are more than ready to destroy the infrastructure" of their southern neighbors "as soon as Kim Jong-un gives the green light," the North Korean analyst added.

Jang graduated from Mirim Military University in Pyongyang, where he specialized in military simulation software and "penetration into enemy computer systems."

In addition, this specialist promoted assistance to other deserters from North Korea through an NGO.
False identities

The outgoing computer scientist claims to have maintained contacts with his former North Korean counterparts, Kim Jong-un loyal hackers operating out of the Chinese city of Shenyang and hiding under the identity of independent programmers.

"My old university friends who are now at the head of North Korean cyber teams say that hacking institutions is very easy," says Jang. "The only thing they need to make South Korea plunge into total chaos is to activate the computer viruses that they have prepared before," the analyst concluded.