Has North Korea Adopted Cyber Warfare As State Policy?

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un uses a computer visits the Air and Anti-air Force Command of the Korean People's Army. KCNA/REUTERS

Levi Maxey, Cipher Brief: An Isolated North Korea Turns to Cyber Coercion and Cyber Chaos

As North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs ruffle the feathers in the United States and regional players in East Asia, there is another, less visible, confrontation occurring in the depths of computer systems around the world.

In the last decade, despite a notable deficiency in global internet access, North Korea has leaped into the spotlight on the geopolitical and criminal cyber stage. Resorting to cyberspace allows Pyongyang, and its leader Kim Jong-un, global reach to coerce adversaries – particularly South Korea and the United States – without the escalatory consequences of conventional military efforts.

“North Korea likely views cyber as a cost-effective, asymmetric, deniable tool that it can employ with little risk of reprisal attacks, in part because its networks are largely separate from the internet, and disruption of internet access would have minimal impact on its economy,” says a U.S. Department of Defense report submitted to Congress in 2015.

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WNU Editor: I suspect that this South Korean report/analysis is true .... North Korea hacking increasingly focused on making money more than espionage: South Korea study (Reuters).