Cyber attacks may fund Kim’s rockets

NORTH KOREA: North Korea’s main spy agency has a special cell called Unit 180 that is likely to have launched some of its most audacious global cyber attacks, defectors and internet security experts have revealed.

The new information comes amid growing suspicion that North Korea may have been behind the Wannacry ‘‘ransomware’’ cyber attack that infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries last week and created chaos in British hospitals and doctors’ surgeries.

Pyongyang has dismissed the allegation as ‘‘ridiculous’’, but it has been blamed in recent years for a series of online attacks, mostly on financial networks in the United States and South Korea.

Those accusations have centred on the hermit state’s alleged connection with a hacking group called Lazarus that is linked to last year’s NZ$89 million cyber heist at the Bangladesh central bank and the 2014 attack on Sony’s Hollywood studio.

Pyongyang’s cyber attacks were aimed at raising cash and were likely organised by Unit 180, a part of the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), its main overseas intelligence agency, said Kim Heung Kwang, a computer scientist who defected in 2004.

‘‘Unit 180 is engaged in hacking financial institutions [by] breaching and withdrawing money out of bank accounts,’’ Kim said. It is feared that revenue gained from cyber attacks is helping to fund North Korea’s nuclear and missile programme.

Pyongyang tested another midrange ballistic missile yesterday in its continued effort to develop a rocket capable of striking the US with a nuclear warhead. The projectile was fired from an area north-east of the capital, and flew east for about 520 kilometres towards the Sea of Japan.

The test was confirmed by US Pacific Command in Hawaii, and

"Unit 180 is engaged in hacking financial institutions [by] breaching and withdrawing money out of bank accounts." Kim Heung Kwang, North Korean deefector

the US reconfirmed its ‘‘ironclad commitment’’ to allies South Korea and Japan.

Japan registered its protest against the latest provocation and the new South Korean president, Moon Jae In, convened a National Security Council meeting to discuss the latest crisis.

Moon’s new national security chief, Chung Eui-yong, had said South Korea should ‘‘take the lead’’ in restoring frosty inter-korea relations.

The US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, said both economic and diplomatic pressure will continue to be applied to North Korea in the wake of the ballistic missile launch.

‘‘The ongoing testing is disappointing, disturbing and we ask that they cease that,’’ Tillerson said. – Telegraph Group