N. Koreans 'hack' South game sites

South Korean police said Thursday they have busted a criminal gang which used elite North Korean computer hackers to break into online game sites and steal prize points worth millions of dollars.The North has been accused of several cyber-attacks on the South in recent years, but this was the first reported case of hacking for profit. Police said some of the proceeds apparently went to the regime in Pyongyang.They said 17 South Koreans had stolen 6.4 billion won ($6.02 million) since June 2009 through the scam after hiring 30 North Korean hackers based in northeast China.

Whether North Korea was responsible for the Sony hack or not, the consensus is that North Korea has some of the best hackers in the world.

Life inside a communist country with a controlling dictator for a leader is not only suffocating and dangerous; it's also vastly different from life in developed countries elsewhere across the globe.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The scandal shaking up South Korea's main spy agency is not cloak-and-dagger stuff, but the kind of low-grade trickery anyone with an Internet connection could pull off. And the target was not Seoul's opaque rival to the north, but the country's own people.

AP Photo/Ahn Young-joonSEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's main spy agency has a special cell called Unit 180 that is likely to have launched some of its most daring and successful cyber attacks, according to defectors, officials and internet security experts.

REUTERS/KCNA Isolated North Korea is developing sophisticated tools to digitally spy on its citizens, who are increasingly using mobile devices to connect to each other, a US government-funded report released on Wednesday says.

North Korea on Sunday lashed out at South Korea for accusing Pyongyang of hacking Seoul online game sites and stealing prize money, rejecting the allegations as an "unacceptable provocation."Seoul police said earlier this month they had busted a criminal gang which hired some 30 elite North Korean computer hackers to break into online game sites and steal prize points worth 6.4 billion won ($5.9 million).They said some of the proceeds for the hackers-- graduates of top colleges in Pyongyang and based in northeast China-- apparently went to the North's regime.

ReutersNorth Korea is the prime suspect in a hack of South Korea's cyber command that resulted in the theft of confidential military documents, Yonhap News Agency reported. "It seems the intranet server of the cyber command has been contaminated with malware," an official at the Ministry of National Defense told Yonhap. "We found that some military documents, including confidential information, have been hacked."