North Korea Is Blackmailing Top South Korean Online Retailer For $2.66 Million

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: South Korea says that North Korea is behind a data breach that occurred last May, where hackers stole details about 10 million user accounts from Interpark.com, one of the country's biggest shopping portals. The hackers later tried to extort Interpark management by requesting for 3 billion won ($2.66 million / 2.39 million euros), otherwise they were going to release the data on the internet. [The hackers wanted the money transferred to their accounts as Bitcoin.] Authorities say they tracked the source of the hack to an IP in North Korea, previously used in other attacks on South Korean infrastructure. "Besides the evidence related to the IP addresses and the techniques used in the attacks, investigators also said that the emails Interpark management received, written in the Korean language, contained words and vocabulary expressions that are only used in the North," reports Softpedia.

Serves them right

[Dunbal]

I'm sorry but when you don't take your customers' security seriously, don't complain when someone walks through the front door and steals the stuff you left lying around. The hackers are wrong, but it's the store's own damned fault. They'd rather make more profit than pay for serious security. Shows what they think of their clients.

Re: Serves them right

[Anonymous Coward]

Just kidding! I'm going to ram this tire iron up my ass now!

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[Aighearach]

Yes. Go get to it.

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[Megol]

Hey some of those "savages" are actually decent people! Besides nuking them will lead to contamination of Europe! ... we are talking about the UK, right?

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[Anonymous Coward]

The store isn't the victim, it's a(n incompetent/negligent) middle man. The customers of the store are the victims. GP is not blaming them, idiot.

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[Dunbal]

The VICTIMS are the customers who are about to have their private information plastered all over the internet. The store is not a victim. It's pretty obvious they don't give a shit.

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[Dunbal]

You don't think breaches of this kind would negatively affect the company?

Besides the point entirely. I was accused of victim blaming. Say you are a construction worker and you lend me your tools to look after until tomorrow. I don't give a damn and leave your tools lying around where anyone can steal them. Next day, the tools are gone and when you ask me for them I just shrug my shoulders. Who is the victim - me or you? Yeah ok, I have lost credibility. You will never lend me any tools again. But I wouldn't call me a VICTIM. If anything, I am an accomplice.

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[Dunbal]

Nothing is unhackable.

In theory. In practice humans go for the low hanging fruit. This store was probably hacked because of ridiculous password security or SQL injection, or some other trivial technique. You don't need to build government-level security to convince a bad guy to move on to an easier target.

Also the store is not the victim. The customers who trusted the store are.

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[Salgak1]

. . .or, the most common source of breaches of them all: either an insider or a social engineering effort. Or at least as part of the effort. . .

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[Falconhell]

Who knew glorious leader posted on Slashdot? Is this APKs real login?

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[Salgak1]

Well OF COURSE Lil' Kim is on Slashdot. Like his father before him, he so ronery. . . . ;)

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[lalleglad]

How can he be so ronery with all the girls he has to choose from?
He is so chou-beri-lucky :-)

Re:so that's how much..

[Dunbal]

We're going to launch a missile, and S. Korea is going to pay for it!

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[Behrooz Amoozad]

Apparently it's hard to drop packets from a /22
complete range is 175.45.176.0 to 175.45.179.255

...and Kim is to blame

[hexonut]

It's funny how every time something happens when the culprit seems to originate from a country that the US doesn't like, it's always suggested that the government of that country is to blame. Case in point: the title reads "North Korea Is Blackmailing...", not "North Korean hackers are...". Same thing when something happens out of Russia: for sure Putin orchestrated it. If not Putin, who else could have? A cat?

I'm imagining a situation: what if every time something happens that looks like originating out o

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[eht]

There are many people other than starving illiterate peasants and Party and military staff. None of those people have internet access except with permission of the Party and military staff, with tight monitoring of what is going on.

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[walterbyrd]

Funny how some people are always grasping for straws to find some reason to smear the US.

Do you actually think some individual in NK, with no connection to the government, could do this? They don't even have open internet connections for individuals.

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[hexonut]

I pretty much think they well could. I actually lived in a communist country for quite a long while and I personally, first-hand, know how things worked there. "Control by the government" is a grossly overstated illusion.

The fact of the matter is, the guards, especially the ones working "in the field" and whose tasks are to control the actual people rather then organize the whole process, are usually recruited from these proverbial illiterate peasants, so the educated city dwellers could very easily find

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[Megol]

An AC calling someone an idiot. What are the odds?

Drop their routing

[Anonymous Coward]

Remind me again what exactly north korea has to offer to the rest of the entire world that we are not dropping the routing to all their ASNs and (if required) every upstream provider that gives them transit?

I mean, China is one thing: they hack the world just like the USA, but they give a *lot* back, it is quite easy to get a lot of chinese contributions in science and engineering and general content. They deserve to be in the internet.

But north korea?