North Korea’s General Bureau of Reconnaissance was responsible for breaching the servers of Interpark, a South Korea-based website that generates hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions each year.
The General Bureau of Reconnaissance, Pyongyang’s main spy agency, breached the company in May and stole personal data pertaining to more than 10 million shoppers, including their names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other information.
Interpark said it learned July 11 its company had been breached by a persistent threat attack and alerted authorities the following day.
According to a spokesperson, the hackers first gained access to an employee’s computer, and identified email patterns that were familiar to the employee before sending an email that contained the malware and opening a back door, which is why the employee was tricked.
South Korean authorities also accused Pyongyang of hacking more than 140,000 computers across 160 different companies and government agencies south of its border. North Korea has denied the accusations.
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