By Kang Hyun-kyung
North Korea allegedly attempted to hack the Presidential Committee for the G20 Summit several times recently, according to a local media report, Thursday.
MBC reported that the National Intelligence Service suspected the North in a recent hacking attempt of the committee’s computer network.
The spy agency, however, stopped short of directly blaming North Korea for the attempts.
The agency suspected that Pyongyang hacked the websites of ministries, government agencies and legislative officials’ personal computers in an effort to gather intelligence.
The NIS was quoted as saying that the North Korean military has a unit consisted of approximately 1,000 trained hackers and their skills are “noteworthy.”
About 9,200 cases of hacking into websites of government agencies were reported this year alone. In 2004, 48,000 attempts were recorded.