Average of 323 Hacking Attempts Per Day Targeting Government and Local Authority Computer Networks

Gwangju Hit by 2,775 Cases, South Jeolla by 4,441 in the Past Five Years
One in Three Attacks Traced to the US or China
Byungdo Han: "Minimize Risks Through Preemptive Blocking"

Byungdo Han, member of the Democratic Party of Korea.

It has been revealed that there are an average of 323 hacking attempts per day targeting the Republic of Korea government’s computer networks. This means a hacking attempt occurs approximately every 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

On September 9, Byungdo Han, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea (representing Iksan-eul, North Jeolla Province), analyzed data submitted by the National Information Resources Service of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Korea Local Information Research & Development Institute. The analysis showed that, over the past five years, there have been a total of 550,100 hacking attempts targeting government computer networks.

By country, the United States accounted for the most attacks with 129,112 cases (23.5%), followed by China with 70,496 cases (12.8%). Attacks from the United States and China combined made up 36.2% of the total. This was followed by South Korea with 49,261 cases, Germany with 27,792 cases, India with 21,462 cases, and Russia with 20,638 cases. Regarding this, an official from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety explained, "The country of origin for attacks may differ from the actual location of the hacker due to the use of proxy routes."

By type, the attacks included: ▲ information leakage, 186,766 cases (34.0%); ▲ system privilege acquisition, 122,339 cases (22.2%); ▲ information gathering, 110,739 cases (20.1%); and ▲ website defacement, 65,545 cases (11.6%). Attacks involving theft and infiltration accounted for more than half of all attempts.

There were 57,060 hacking attempts targeting the computer networks of metropolitan local governments over the past five years. Among them, Gangwon Province experienced the highest number of attacks for a single city or province, with 8,676 cases, accounting for about 15.2% of the total. This figure is close to the combined total for the Seoul metropolitan area (Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon) of 9,928 cases. This was followed by: ▲ South Gyeongsang Province, 5,493 cases; ▲ Gyeonggi Province, 5,463 cases; ▲ South Jeolla Province, 4,441 cases; ▲ Daejeon, 4,212 cases; and ▲ Gwangju, 2,775 cases.

Assemblyman Han warned, "Cybersecurity is national security and public safety. More than 300 hacking attempts every day show that our country is effectively in a state of cyber warfare."

He continued, "Since local governments such as Gangwon Province are facing attacks comparable to those in the capital region, we must ensure there are no regional disparities in security infrastructure and monitoring systems. We also need to strengthen continuous monitoring by precisely classifying high-risk attack types and blocking them preemptively."