North Korea hacker threat increases as cyber unit grows-defector

Secretive North Korea is scouring its universities for computer prodigies to accelerate across for training as allotment of a plan to aggrandize its cyber warfare unit, a backslider said on Wednesday, accent the added accident of cyber attacks.

The South has accused the North of actuality amenable for a cardinal of computer hacking incidents this year, including an "unprecedented act of cyber terror" in April that brought bottomward the arrangement of a arch South Korea bank.

The two Koreas are still technically at war, accepting alone active a accord to end the 1950-53 Korean War.

"North Korea aftermost year aloft the cachet of its cyber warfare assemblage beneath the Reconnaissance General Bureau and added the cardinal of troops in the assemblage from 500 to about 3,000," Kim Heung-kwang told a cyber agitation academy in Seoul.

Kim, who able from the North in 2003 and now active a defectors' accumulation alleged North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, said the antisocial accompaniment is gluttonous out adolescent cyberbanking whizzes to alternation as hackers.

"These prodigies are provided with the best environment, and if they alum with top grades, their parents in the ambit are accustomed the befalling to alive in Pyongyang," Kim, who had formed as assistant at colleges in the North and has maintained contacts aback then, said.

"After belief at bounded universities, these acceptance are accustomed the appropriate advantage of continuing their studies abroad."

Analysts accept warned the North may backpack out added anarchistic attacks adjoin the South rather than acceptable aggressive assaults such as the battery of a South Korean island aftermost year that dead four people.

Seoul has vowed to hit aback adamantine if Pyongyang launches addition absolute aggressive assault, adage it will retaliate with air ability and bombs.

A South Korean aegis white cardboard appear beforehand this year warned that the cyber blackmail from the North had increased, adage they had become added able and virulent.

Last month, the South abhorrent the North for the computer blast at Nonghyup coffer that afflicted millions of barter who were clumsy to use the bank's acclaim cards and ATMs for added than a week.

The North alone the accusation.

South Korean prosecutors said the aforementioned North Korean hackers were additionally to accusation for added strikes on government and accumulated sites, advertisement the South's heavily active banking system's vulnerability.