How South Korea Traced Hacker To Pyongyang

Apparent mistake exposed the March bank hackers IP address, which investigators traced to a North Korean address.

A hackers technical blunder allowed South Korean investigators to trace back recent attacks against the countrys banks and broadcasters to an IP address located in North Koreas capital, Pyongyang.
While the identity of the hacker isnt known, on February 20, the attacker inadvertently exposed his or her IP address (175.45.178.xx) for a few minutes, apparently after experiencing technical difficulties, reported South Koreas
Yonhap News Agency
.
According to the state-run Korea Internet & Security Agency in Seoul, the IP address was traced to the
Ryugyong-dong residential district
of Pyongyang. The IP address is registered to a company called Star Joint Venture (Star JV), which is North Koreas sole service provider, and also
administers the countrys top-level .kp domain
.
Star JV is a joint venture between the Pyongyang regime that rules North Korea -- officially known as the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- and
Loxley Pacific Company
, a Thai company that bills itself as a telecommunications system integration and solutions provider. Bangkok-based Loxley Pacific didnt immediately respond to an emailed request for comment -- sent outside of business hours in Thailand -- about South Korean investigators having attributed the recent bank and broadcaster cyberattacks to a network hosted by Star JV.
[ Tension escalates between North and South Korea. See
South Korea Charges Alleged Hackers
. ]
Officials at the Korea Internet & Security Agency said that because the IP address exposure appeared to be accidental, they think its legitimate and wasnt spoofed, reported Yonhap. Furthermore, the IP address was logged 13 times in the course of South Korean investigators cataloging North Korean systems that accessed the attacked South Korean financial firms systems. They said such access had occurred 1,590 times since June 2012.
The IP address finding has implications beyond just the March 20
wiper malware
attacks. The North Korean IP address made it clear that the North is behind not only the latest hacking but also previous hacking attacks, Kim Seung-joo, a professor at the Graduate School of Information Security at Korea University, told Yonhap.
After
three weeks of analysis
, South Korean government officials only Wednesday said theyd
traced the March 20 malware attacks to North Korea
, based not only on the IP addresses and domains used to launch the attacks, but also on the use of relatively outdated hacking tools and malware, much of which had been seen previously only in attacks sponsored by Pyongyang. The attacks, which targeted three South Korean banks and three broadcasters, resulted in disruptions to online banking, mobile banking and ATM networks.
Interestingly, the bank malware attacks were
launched
shortly after North Korea lost Internet connectivity on March 13 and 14. A statement issued at the time by the Pyongyang-run Korean Central News Agency
blamed the outage on a U.S. and South Korean cyberattack
, claiming that the DPRK had been targeted by intensive and persistent virus attacks.
Without a doubt, the outage was atypical. It should be noted that although North Koreas Internet is small, it is very stable,
said Doug Madory
, senior research engineer for Renesys, in a blog post. Until [March 13 and 14], North Korean outages had been very rare.
But its not clear whether the disruptions resulted from hack attacks launched against North Korean infrastructure, or simply internal glitches. Notably, North Korea only has four networks, all of which are routed by Star JV using a direct link to mainland Chinese service provider China Unicom, as well as via
satellite communications provider Intelsat
, and the outage affected both.
Since it affected both Internet transit connections (China Unicom and Intelsat), it stands to reason the disruption was on the North Korean side,
Madory said
. So perhaps it was networking equipment deeper in the North Korean network which suffered the outage.
Was it the result of a cyber attack? Maybe, he said. It could also have been a power failure, equipment failure or a misconfiguration by a network admin.
In related news, Pyongyang Monday bolstered the countrys Internet connectivity by adding another connection to China Unicom, this time via a link to Hong Kong. The new connection appears to [provide] a third way for traffic to reach the country, although much is unclear,
reported journalist Martyn Williams
, who maintains the North Korea Tech website. Its not immediately clear if it represents a third physical connection or [is] only happening on the network level, and at present theres no way to know if it serves as an additional backup or will become an important connection.
A well-defended perimeter is only half the battle in securing the governments IT environments. Agencies must also protect their most valuable data. Also in the new, all-digital
Secure The Data Center
issue of InformationWeek Government: The White Houses gun control efforts are at risk of failure because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives outdated Firearms Tracing System is in need of an upgrade. (Free registration required.)

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