North Korean Game Hackers Help That Country Earn Hard Currency

The Chosun Ilbo reports that, according to a police investigation,elite North Korean hackers created and distributed programs that stole millions of U.S. dollars from popular South Korean on-line gaming sites, such as Lineage and Dungeon Fighter.
The hackers, who are believed to have graduated from the North's prestigious Kim Il-sung University and Kim Chaek University of Technology, stole gaming items such as weapons, armor and other objects that players collect and store in their on-line games and trade for cash. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said on Thursday it had arrested five South Koreans, including a 43-year-old identified only by his surname Chung. They were apprehended for creating programs, with the aid of hackers that use personal information stolen from servers for on-line games, and distributing them to buyers. Nine others were also arrested for aiding Chung in distributing the software.
"It appears that North Korea has gone beyond the traditional methods of earning foreign currency, such as drug manufacturing and producing counterfeit bills, to creating Internet hacking programs," a police official said.
Chung, who runs an Internet chat room in Daejeon in southwestern Korea, traveled to China's Heilongjiang Province in northern China in early 2009 and was introduced to around 30 North Korean hackers through a broker.

Time to Revamp Korea's National ID System?

I recommend another very interesting article generated by the cyber-attack and leakage of personal information from Nate and Cyworld accounts.  This one, accompanied by a nice graphic (click to see a larger version) was published in The Korea Times.
The article notes that the compromised information included names, passwords, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and most alarmingly, resident registration numbers, the country’s equivalent to social security numbers.
Government officials insist that the country’s computer security defense is still salvageable as they scramble to apply the patchwork. But critics, unconvinced, claim it’s officially time to blow up the national ID system and start over.
``The resident registration number of virtually every Korean is out there ― the information is so easily available that police announced a while ago that hackers are barely getting 1 won for each code. And we have heard rumors that criminals are passing these numbers around in (Microsoft) Excel files,’’ said Jang Yeo-gyeong, a computer security expert at activist group Jinbo Net.
From a security standpoint, resident registration numbers are flawed from the start. The 13-digit code reveals the birth date, sex and registration site of a person, unlike comparable systems in the United States and Japan based on random numbering.
People here submit their national ID numbers to Korean Web sites due to local laws requiring them to make verifiable real-name registrations for virtually every type of Internet activity, not only for encrypted communications like e-commerce, online banking and e-government services but also casual tasks like e-mail and blogging.