US Army Says North Korea Has Hackers and Electronic Warfare Specialists Working and Operating Abroad

In a report published a month ago by the US Army said North Korea has at least 6,000 hackers and electronic warfare specialists working in its ranks with a large number of these are operating in nations, like Belarus, China, India, Malaysia, and Russia. 

The report is a tactical manual that the US Army uses to train their troops and military pioneers, and which the Army has made public for the first time just the previous month. 

Named “North Korean Tactics,” the 332-page report consists of a ‘treasure trove’ of data about the Korean People’s Army (KPA) like the military strategies, weaponry, leadership structure, troop types, logistics, and electronic warfare capacities. 

By far most of the report manages exemplary military tactics and capacities; the report likewise highlights North Korea’s clandestine hacking units. “Most EW [electronic warfare] and cyberspace warfare operations take place within the Cyber Warfare Guidance Unit, more commonly known as Bureau 121,” the US Army said. 

This evaluation is equivalent to the past reports from the intelligence and cybersecurity communities, which have additionally connected all of North Korea’s hackers back to Bureau 121, a division of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a North Korean intelligence agency that is a part of the National Defence Commission. 

The US Armed force says Bureau 121 has developed exponentially lately, as North Korea has expanded it’s the cyberspace exercises. According to the report, Bureau 121 developed from “at least 1,000 elite hackers in 2010” to more than 6,000 members today. 

The number is a steady one with comparable figures published by the South Korean Defence Ministry, which said that North Korea was operating a cyberwarfare staff of 3,000 out of 2013, a number that later multiplied to 6,000 by 2015. 

Notwithstanding, the US Army as of now believes that it’s 6,000 figure isn’t totally accurate. Army officials state that they have estimates for the internal divisions within Bureau 121, numbers that seem to have not been released previously, until the previous month. 

They don’t have an exact number for the members part of the Lazarus Group sub-division, yet this group is the one, for the most part, the one to which North Korean authorities turn “to create social chaos by weaponizing enemy network vulnerabilities and delivering a payload if directed to do so by the regime.” 

While the US Army report doesn’t go a lot into details on why the Pyongyang regime lets military hackers travel abroad, there are previous reports and court documents that have gone into these details, with the Pyongyang regime utilizing its hackers to set up shell companies that serve both as cover when setting up ‘foreign-based server infrastructure’, yet in addition as ‘intermediary entities in money laundering operations’. 

In any case, while the US Army report acknowledges that North Korean hackers have been engaged with financial cybercrime, Armed officials go significantly further and outline the whole North Korean government as a criminal network, with the Kim regime being associated with a wide scope of activities that likewise incorporated drug trading, counterfeiting, and human trafficking, and not simply the variety of cybercrime.