Suspected Hacker of Korean Bank
Suspected Hacker of Korean Bank
May 2008 Police on Thursday arrested an American who allegedly hacked the computer network of a Korean savings bank, disrupting its systems and attempting to blackmail it for money. It's the first time a domestic bank has been hacked, police said. The Korean National Police Agency's Cyber Terror Response Center on Thursday requested an arrest warrant for a 24-year-old American identified only as "J" on charges of hacking the network of "M" Savings Bank and demanding a blackmail payout. J allegedly hacked into bank's loan data administration system late last month and encrypted the customer database so the bank couldn't access it. The hacker left a message on the bank's internal bulletin board saying he would unlock the database if US$200,000 was wired to his account, otherwise the system would remain disabled. The culprit is also believed to have sent the same message via cell phone text message to 160 bank employees. The bank has 30,000 customers and one trillion won in deposits. A police officer said there have been cases of criminals stealing customers' online banking data and withdrawing their deposits but this is the first time a domestic bank's computer network has been hacked. After graduating from a two-year college in the U.S., police said "J" came to Korea on a work visa in 2003 but it's unclear what he has been doing in the country. On the same day, the police foreign affairs bureau arrested three people, including a 51-year-old identified as "Lee", for allegedly gathering wireless Internet access information on two banks for hacking purposes. The information they obtained is a code that is exchanged when customers access the bank network wirelessly. By decoding it, the hackers would have been able to figure out the web administrator's ID which allows access to the banking system. Police said after hacking the ID, the hackers were planning to go to China from where they would steal the banks' customer information. Once they had access to account information, they could have withdrawn deposits. ..Digital Chosun Ilbo
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