Man Hires Chinese to Hack into Korean Computers

An organization of hackers was caught by the police for hacking into Korean portal sites to procure the personal information of 50,000 internet users and then stealing cyber cash from them.

The Cyber Crime Investigation Department of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency arrested Mr. Lee (37, unemployed) on July 8 for heading an organization with a group of hackers in China and a group of e-money changers in Korea, for stealing and cashing e-cash worth 150 million won.

The police arrested Mr. Jo (27) and another person for cashing the stolen cyber money in Korea at Lee’s request. The Korean police requested, through Interpol, Chinese help in tracking down the eight Chinese hackers, including Jin (28). According to the police, Lee, a former e-money changer, moved to Shenyang last October and hired Chinese and ethnic Korean Chinese hackers.

Lee was able to acquire the IDs and passwords of about 50,000 Korean netizens with the help of the Chinese hackers. These hackers installed a hacking program on the portal site and used what is known as the “key stroke” method, which delivers whatever information netizens type in the site directly to them.

Lee took advantage of the fact that most Korean netizens use the same ID and password when using portal and game sites and logged on using those to steal e-money. They later cashed the stolen e-money worth 150 million won through Jo and his group of e-money changers. The Chinese hackers, Korean money changers, and Lee divided up the cash in a 4:4:3 ratio.

“Chinese hackers took advantage of the security flaws in the Windows OS that were announced in January,” police said. “In order to protect yourself from hackers, you must use different IDs and passwords for different sites and frequently change them.”

needjung@donga.com