North Korea builds up cyber warfare unit
Posted: 05 May 2009 1602 hrs

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SEOUL: North Korea has strengthened its cyber warfare unit, increasing the country's ability to launch a computer attack on South Korea and the United States, officials and a report said.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency cited official sources saying that the North has a "technology reconnaissance team" dedicated to collecting information and disrupting US and South Korean military computer networks.

The team now has about 100 hackers, mostly graduates of a military academy in Pyongyang, it said.

A military spokesman told AFP that the unit had "upgraded equipment and strengthened cyber warfare capabilities", but declined to provide further details.

The South Korean defence ministry said on Monday that Seoul and Washington agreed last week to cooperate in fighting cyber attacks against their defence networks from countries including China and North Korea.

In 2004, hackers based in China used information-stealing viruses to break into the computer systems of South Korean government agencies.


- AFP/so