65% of North Korean Cyber Attacks Target South Korea... Aimed at Information Theft

US Media Releases Security Firm's Confidential Report

It has been revealed that North Korea utilizes hacking to extract major foreign information. An analysis of cyber attacks with identifiable location information showed that two-thirds of the total incidents were concentrated in South Korea.

On the 26th, the American foreign affairs magazine Foreign Policy recently reported on a confidential report released by the security firm Recorded Future. The report contained an analysis of 273 cyber attacks carried out by North Korea-linked hacking groups over the past 14 years.

Hacker in a dark red hoodie in front of a digital Korean flag and binary streams background cybersecurity concept

According to the report, over 70% of North Korea's motivations for conducting cyber attacks were for information gathering purposes. The goal was to obtain information related to hostile countries or to secretly extract sensitive technologies. As a result, the primary targets were government agencies. Other major targets included cryptocurrency, media, finance, and defense sectors.

Among the cyber attacks for which location information could be identified, 80% were concentrated in the Asian region. In particular, cyber attacks targeting South Korea accounted for more than 65%, the largest share. The second largest was the United States (8.5%).