North Korea in the gambling business?

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North Korea in the gambling business?
Updated:2024-06-20 15:04    Views:59

As tensions ebb and flow between a divided Korea (still officially at war with itself since June 25, 1950) the South Korean cyber security community is accusing the North of circulating a program for gambling sites in an attempt to profit off their neighbors’ penchant for gambling.

Propaganda is par for the course in the decades old war for minds and hearts between the two countries, but newspaper Dong-A Libo seems to give some weight to the allegation in a recent article. A hidden program called, “Poker game server” was found with an IP address of “175.45.178.○○” according to the report. That address just happens to belong to the North’s general intelligence bureau according to the news outlet. This is the organization that South Korea says oversees cyber attacks against them. The organization is accused of paralyzing the computer networks of three South Korean broadcasters; KBS, MBC and YTN, and three banks; Shinhan, NongHyup and Jeju banks on March 20, 2013.

Reports indicate that the program was active from August 2013 until recently. Common backend data found behind the scenes with online casinos such as number of active players, jackpots at stake, total income, and other data were available to operators of the software. The front end was presented in the Korean language and allowed processing of credit cards.

The report states that North Korea’s general intelligence bureau was involved in multiple gambling websites that targeted South Koreans for more than two years.

“Under any scenarios, chances are high that the North’s general intelligence bureau would have earned large amounts of money in South Korea by operating gambling sites by itself or selling the program to multiple South Korean organized crime rings,” A white hat hacker reportedly said.