An Internet Banking Hacking and Robbery

For the first time in Korea, a bank’s Internet banking system was hacked and a large amount of money was robbed.

On June 3, the Cyber Crime Investigation division of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency applied for an arrest warrant against Lee (20), and Kim (19), a woman living with Lee, for allegedly withdrawing (defrauding on the Internet) 50 million won from a bank account after learning a person’s personal identification number by using a hacking program that is readily available by anyone.

In addition, Lee’s younger brother (17), who made a banknote to Lee, and his male friend Kim (17) were convicted without physical detention on the same charge.

According to the police, Lee, a high school dropout, posted an article named “money tech” in an Internet community of a well-known portal site at an Internet café in Chuncheon City, Gangwon Province at the beginning of last month, and hacked the computer of Kim (42, female), who clicked on the article.

Lee made a hacking program, “net devil,” to be automatically installed on the computer of Kim, who read his article.

“Net devil” is a program that shows the intact contents input by wording to the person who installed it and is easily available on foreign Internet sites or on P2P (Peer to Peer: sharing a file between individuals).

Lee found out Kim’s bank, account number, ID, personal identification number, certificate number, security card number, logged into Kim’s Internet banking account and transferred 50 million won to five banknotes held by Kim (male) at around 6:00 p.m. on May 10. Lee then had his living partner, Kim, withdraw the money.

Kim, who fell victim to the case, reported the robbery to the police after learning that her money had been withdrawn from her account at around 10:30 p.m., four and half hours after the incident.

Jae-MyoungLee egija@donga.com