korea

South Korea apparently still has a mystery on its hands. Who launched a cyberattack against several of its banks and broadcasters this week?

Regulators for the country initially pointed the finger at China, saying that the attacks originated from a Chinese IP address. But they admitted today that they jumped the gun.

The IP address used in the attack was actually traced to one of the banks hit on Wednesday. South Korea's NongHyup Bank had been using the address as a virtual one for its internal network, according to Reuters. By coincidence, that address matched one registered in China.… Read more

The cyberattack that targeted banks, TV broadcasters, and an Internet service provider in South Korea yesterday originated from an IP address in China, but the identities of the people responsible remain unknown, South Korean regulators say.

"We've identified that a Chinese IP has connected to the organizations affected," a spokesman for South Korea's Communications Commission told a press conference on Thursday, according to a Reuters account of the event.

The revelation comes a day after a massive coordinated attack on servers in South Korea led officials to raise the alert status for the nation's army … Read more

South Korea's police are currently investigating a "massive" hack attack on Internet service provider LG Uplus, which led to server outages at three domestic broadcasters and two major banks.

As a result, the army raised its alert status amid concerns the attacks were initiated by its neighbors in North Korea.

Reuters reported Wednesday that authorities were looking into the attack on LG Uplus, which was suspected to be conducted by a group calling itself the "Whois Team".

The investigations were triggered by disrupted servers at television networks YTN, MBC and KBS. Customers at Shinhan Bank … Read more

Even though North Korea is known to have extremely limited Internet service, the Web-based bittorrent tracker The Pirate Bay announced today that it relocated to this closed-off and highly censored country.

"The Pirate Bay has been hunted in many countries around the world. Not for illegal activities but being persecuted for beliefs of freedom of information. Today, a new chapter is written in the history of the movement, as well as the history of the internets," The Pirate Bay wrote in a blog post. "Today we can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of … Read more

I fear that North Korea is about to learn what the rest of us have been forced to swallow for the last few years.

Once technology gets its hooks into you, you have no idea how much you'll change.

Not a few weeks ago, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt made what was then termed a private visit to Kim-Jong-un's unusual fiefdom.

Perhaps he was allowed in because the powers-that-be thought they could get a fine price on a few Chromebook Pixel laptops.

Perhaps the "Supreme Leader" himself wanted to improve his Google results and attempt to confirm … Read more

Just one month after North Korea relaxed restrictions on tourists' cell phone use, the country will soon allow foreigners to access the Internet via mobile devices.

3G service will be operational within the country's borders by March 1, but North Koreans won't have access to the mobile Internet, according to the Associated Press. Koryolink, a 3G mobile provider partially owned by the North Korean government, on Friday began informing foreigners living in Pyongyang that they will soon be able to subscribe to monthly data plans.

The move comes a few weeks after North Korea announced it would allow foreign visitors to use cell phones within the country, … Read more

North Korea conducted its third nuclear weapons test this evening, the country's official news agency said, and apparently the blast had a higher explosive yield than the earlier tests.

The 5.1-magnitude artificial tremor (initially measured at magnitude 4.9) struck before noon Tuesday local time in North Hamgyong Province. Initially, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok told Bloomberg it was "likely" a nuclear test, adding that more investigation was necessary. Meanwhile, a U.N. Security Council diplomat said the seismic activity was the result of a nuclear test.

The Korean Central News Agency later … Read more

There's just never enough battery life on your smartphone, is there?

You need it for so many things, like informing yourself, informing others and informing some mythical creature that you're about to kill it.

This might be especially true if, say, you happen to be in a U.S. Army garrison in South Korea.

Everyone in South Korea is on smartphones nonstop. It's de rigueur.

Now, efficiency is very important to the Army. Which means it's always tempting to charge a smartphone by plugging it into a computer.

The small drawback at a U.S. Army … Read more

Maps of North Korea's landscape have for decades been largely empty, but thanks to "a community of citizen cartographers," Google Maps has managed to fill in some of the blanks.

Tapping input submitted to its Google Map Maker tool, the Web giant has added more detailed, up-to-date information to its maps of the reclusive nation, including streets, names, and other points of interest.

Jayanth Mysore, Google's senior product manager of Map Maker, discussed in a company blog post the effort behind assembling the new data: