North Korea training thousands of hackers

South Korea believe hacking attack originated in North Korea. Julie Noce reports.

INVESTIGATORS have yet to pinpoint the culprit behind a synchronized cyberattack in South Korea last week.

But in Seoul, the focus remains fixed on North Korea, where South Korean security experts say Pyongyang has been training a team of computer-savvy "cyber warriors'' as cyberspace becomes a fertile battleground in the standoff between the two Koreas.

Malware shut down 32,000 computers and servers at three major South Korean TV networks and three banks last Wednesday, disrupting communications and banking businesses, officials said.

The investigation into who planted the malware could take weeks or even months.

South Korean investigators have produced no proof yet that North Korea was behind the cyberattack, and on Friday said the malware was traced to a Seoul computer.

But South Korea has pointed the finger at Pyongyang in six cyberattacks since 2009, even creating a cyber security command centre in Seoul to protect the Internet-dependent country from hackers from the North.

It may seem unlikely that impoverished North Korea, with one of the most restrictive Internet policies in the world, would have the ability to threaten affluent South Korea, a country considered a global leader in telecommunications.

North Korean students surf the Internet at a computer terminal inside a computer lab at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang. North Korea is training an army of "cyber warriors" to hack systems in South Korea and the US, say experts. File image: P Photo/David Guttenfelder

The average yearly income in North Korea was just $1190 per person in 2011 - just a fraction of the average yearly income of $22,200 for South Koreans that same year, according to the Bank of Korea in Seoul.

But over the past several years, North Korea has poured money and resources into science and technology.

In December, scientists succeeded in launching a satellite into space aboard a long-range rocket from its own soil. And in February, North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test, its third.

"IT'' has become a buzzword in North Korea, which has developed its own operating system called Red Star.

The regime also encouraged a passion for gadgets among its elite, introducing a Chinese-made tablet computer for the North Korean market. Teams of developers came up with software for everything from composing music to learning how to cook.

But South Korea and the U.S. believe North Korea also has thousands of hackers trained by the state to carry its warfare into cyberspace, and that their cyber offensive skills are as good as or better than their counterparts in China and South Korea.

South Korean computer researchers check the computer servers of Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) as a police officer from the Digital Forensic Investigation watches at the Cyber Terror Response Center at the National Police Agency in Seoul after a synchronized cyberattack which Seoul has blamed on North Korea. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

"The newest addition to the North Korean asymmetric arsenal is a growing cyber warfare capability,'' James Thurman, commander of the U.S. forces in South Korea, told U.S. legislators in March 2012.

"North Korea employs sophisticated computer hackers trained to launch cyber-infiltration and cyber-attacks'' against South Korea and the US.

In 2010, Won Sei-hoon, then chief of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, put the number of professional hackers in North Korea's cyber warfare unit at 1000.

North Korean students are recruited to the nation's top science schools to become "cyber warriors,'' said Kim Heung-kwang, who said he trained future hackers at a university in the industrial North Korean city of Hamhung for two decades before defecting in 2003.

He said future hackers also are sent to study abroad in China and Russia.

In 2009, then-leader Kim Jong Il ordered Pyongyang's "cyber command'' expanded to 3000 hackers, he said, citing a North Korean government document that he said he obtained that year.

North Koreans work at computer terminals inside the Grand People's Study House in Pyongyang, North Korea. Investigators have yet to pinpoint the culprit behind a synchronized cyberattack in South Korea but in Seoul, the focus remains fixed on North Korea. File image: AP /David Guttenfelde

The veracity of the document could not be independently confirmed.

Kim Heung-kwang, who has lived in Seoul since 2004, speculated that more have been recruited since then, and said some are based in China to infiltrate networks abroad.

What is clear is that "`North Korea has a capacity to send malware to personal computers, servers or networks and to launch DDOS-type attacks,'' he said. "Their targets are the United States and South Korea.''

Expanding its warfare into cyberspace by developing malicious computer codes is cheaper and faster for North Korean than building nuclear devices or other weapons of mass destructions.

The online world allows for anonymity because it is easy to fabricate IP addresses and destroy the evidence leading back to the hackers, according to C. Matthew Curtin, founder of Interhack Corp.

Thurman said cyberattacks are ``ideal'' for North Korea because they can take place relatively anonymously. He said cyberattacks have been waged against military, governmental, educational and commercial institutions.

Employees react at the newsroom of the all-news cable channel YTN as the broadcaster's computer network was paralysed in Seoul.

North Korean officials have not acknowledged allegations that computer experts are trained as hackers, and have refuted many of the cyberattack accusations. Pyongyang has not commented on the most recent widespread attack in South Korea.

In June 2012, a seven-month investigation into a hacking incident that disabled news production system at the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo led to North Korea's government telecommunications center, South Korean officials said.

In South Korea, the economy, commerce and every aspect of daily life is deeply dependent on the Internet, making it ripe grounds for a disruptive cyberattack.

In North Korea, in contrast, is just now getting online. Businesses are starting to use online banking services and debit cards have grown in popularity.

But only a sliver of the population has access to the global Internet, meaning an Internet outage last week - which Pyongyang blamed on hackers from Seoul and Washington - had little bearing on most North Koreans.

"North Korea has nothing to lose in a cyber battle,'' said Kim Seeongjoo, a professor at Seoul-based Korea University's Department of Cyber Defense.

"Even if North Korea turns out to be the attacker behind the broadcasters' hacking, there is no target for South Korean retaliation.''

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Knox nervously awaits verdict

Amanda Knox pictured at a news conference in Seattle in 2011, after returning home from Italy after an Italian appeals court threw out her murder conviction for the death of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. Picture: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren Source: AP

ITALY'S highest court of appeals is set to rule on whether US student Amanda Knox, acquitted in 2011 of murdering her British housemate in the university town of Perugia, will face another trial.

The court is due to decide whether to uphold a 2012 prosecution appeal to reinstate the convictions against Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.

Knox and Sollecito had initially been sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison for killing and sexually assaulting Meredith Kercher in 2007, but were acquitted on appeal after four years in prison.

Filing the application last year on behalf of Kercher's family, Perugia prosecutor Giovanni Galati said he was "convinced" that Knox and Sollecito were behind the gruesome killing.

Mr Galati said the acquittal, which was based mainly on the admissibility of DNA evidence in the case, contained "omissions and many mistakes".

The judges will base their ruling on points of law rather than a re-examination of the evidence and the former lovers are not expected in court.

Knox "is a bit anxious and waiting for the decision, which she knows is important," Luciano Ghirga, the American's lawyer, told the Ansa news agency last week.

This is an undated file photo released by the Italian police of 22-year-old murdered British university student Meredith Kercher.

Should the prosecution's request be upheld, Knox and Sollecito could face a re-trial in Florence, though Knox would likely be tried in absentia.

The Seattle student returned to her home town immediately after her acquittal and the United States does not normally extradite its citizens abroad to face legal action.

Kercher, 21, was found half-naked with her throat slashed in a pool of blood in her bedroom in the house that she shared with Knox on November 2, 2007.

Her body was covered with knife wounds and bruises and investigators found traces of a sexual assault.

A third person, a local Ivory Coast-born drifter named Rudy Guede, who like the other two has always denied the murder, is the only person still in prison for the crime which prosecutors described as a frenzied sex attack.

The appeals judge who freed Knox and Sollecito in 2011 said the killing remained "unsolved" because investigators insist it must have been carried out by more than one person.

Amanda Knox is not expected to return to Italy if a retrial is ordered.

Kercher's family have called for answers, insisting that 47 knife wounds on Meredith and the apparent use of two different knives in the attack meant that more than one killer had been involved.

Prosecutors had alleged that Kercher was killed in a drug-fuelled sex attack involving Knox, Sollecito and Guede and had claimed that it was the American student who delivered the final blows to the victim while the other two held her down.

Knox was painted by her accusers as a seductive "she-devil" who had an unhealthy obsession with sex, while her defence insisted she was simply a naive girl-next-door, a yoga lover whose nickname "Foxy Knoxy" referred to her childhood football skills.

In her first interrogation following the murder, Knox said she was in the house at the time and falsely identified the owner of a bar where she worked as a waitress as the killer.

She later said that she was with Sollecito at his house all night and that her initial comments were misunderstood and only given after heavy questioning.

Sollecito also changed his story under questioning, but both students later blamed exhaustion and police coercion for their contradictory statements, which were made without lawyers present.

The key to the appeal was an independent analysis of two pieces of evidence that had helped convict Knox and Sollecito - a kitchen knife and Kercher's bra clasp.

The review cast serious doubt on the original analysis, with experts and video evidence pointing to sloppy practice among the police at the crime scene and possible contamination of the evidence.

Both the original trial and the appeal were accompanied by sensational tabloid headlines, shocking exposes and international television coverage which critics warned was influencing the court.

The blue-eyed Knox has written a memoir on her ordeal, due to be published in April by HarperCollins, which, like this publication, is owned by News Corp.
 

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Harry to skip Vegas on US trip

Prince Harry will return to the US, where he will visit veterans at a Washington army hospital. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

OFFICIALS say Prince Harry is returning to the United States - but this time he's skipping Las Vegas.

The 28-year-old prince will travel to the US east coast as well as Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado, to support veterans' charities and get in a bit of polo.

Harry, a longtime supporter of charities that rehabilitate war veterans, will attend several events at the 2013 Warrior Games, a competition between British and American veteran athletes.

"Prince Harry wants to highlight once again the extraordinary commitment and sacrifice of our injured servicemen and women," said Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Harry's private secretary.

Harry recently spent 20 weeks in Afghanistan as co-pilot gunner on an Apache attack helicopter.

His May 9-15 visit will include trips to Arlington National Cemetery, Walter Reed National Medical Centre and an exhibition on Capitol Hill about land mine clearance, a favourite subject of his late mother, Princess Diana. He will also visit areas in New Jersey hard hit by Hurricane Sandy.

Harry will also play in the Sentebale Polo Cup in Greenwich, Connecticut. Sentebale - which means "forget-me-not" - is a charity founded by Harry and Lesotho's Prince Seeiso that helps children struggling with poverty in the tiny southern African country.

On his last US visit, the third-in-line to the British throne stormed into the headlines last year when he was caught frolicking in the nude with a woman after an alleged game of strip billiards in his Las Vegas hotel room.
 

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Gang-rape suspect taken to hospital

Activists working on a banner in January, calling for the death sentence for rapists, one month after the gang rape and murder of a student in Delhi. Picture: Raveendran Source: AFP

A DEFENDANT in the New Delhi bus gang-rape trial was admitted to hospital on Monday with chest pains, a fortnight after his brother and co-accused was found dead in a prison cell, a report said.

Mukesh Singh was taken to Safdarjung hospital after he complained of feeling unwell while in transit from Tihar jail to the court, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted public prosecutor Dayan Krishnan as telling the trial judge.

Proceedings at the court in Saket, in south Delhi, were adjourned in the afternoon as officials waited for the hospital report.

Mukesh Singh is one of four men on trial for the murder and gang-rape of a 23-year-old student who died in hospital in Singapore on December 29, 13 days after being attacked on a bus as she returned from a movie in the Indian capital.

A 17-year-old defendant is being tried separately in a youth court.

Mukesh Singh's brother, Ram Singh, who was the driver of the bus used in the attack, was found hanging in his prison cell in Tihar on March 11.

The mother of Mukesh and Ram Singh, after Ram was found dead in an Indian jail on March 11. Ram and Mukesh were co-accused in the Delhi gang rape of a student. Picture: Manish Swarup

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Aussie-run orphanage 'abused kids'

An Australian-run orphanage in Cambodia has been shut over concerns of child abuse and human trafficking. Source: Supplied

CAMBODIAN authorities have shut an orphanage run by an Australian woman amid allegations of children being beaten and human trafficking taking place.

Officials and a rights group said police in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Friday raided the unlicensed orphanage, called Love in Action, and rescued 21 children.

Gratianne Quade, a spokeswoman for SISHA, an anti-trafficking organisation in Cambodia, said an Australian woman who ran the orphanage was not arrested in the Friday raid and her current whereabouts were not known.

Poverty compels many parents in Cambodia to send their children to orphanages. SISHA estimates that 70 per cent of Cambodia's 100,000 orphans actually have at least one parent.

Um Sophanara, an official at the Social Affairs Ministry, which oversees orphanages, confirmed the closure but declined to give details. A SISHA statement said the raid came after several groups of children had fled the orphanage recently and reported a variety of neglect and abuse problems to authorities.

"The shutdown is a massive step forward, demonstrating the Cambodian government's increased capacity to deal with abusive orphanages,'' SISHA said, adding that its Australian owner was under investigation for human trafficking, child abuse, neglect and running an unregistered orphanage.

An investigation found "the food standards were subpar, some children were visibly ill and not taken to a doctor, the facility was dirty, sewage was blocked, and the living quarters were overcrowded," the SISHA statement said, adding that interviews with children revealed "many instances of physical abuse from the staff".

Love in Action's website describes it as a Christian-run facility that receives funding from church groups in Australia.

Separately, the 36-year-old director of an orphanage in northwestern Siem Reap province was arrested Friday for repeatedly sexually abusing two girls, 11 and 12, over a four-month period, police said.

The suspect, Mon Savuth, was detained for the alleged abuse at the Angkor Orphanage & Education Organization, but the centre - which cares for 36 children - remains open, said Duong Thavery, a provincial police chief in Siem Reap.

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Dead ducks pulled from China river

Chinese officials have pulled 1000 dead ducks from a Chinese river, after Shanghai said it had almost finished removing thousands of dead pigs from its waterways. Source: adelaidenow

AT least 1000 dead ducks were found floating in a Chinese river, state media reported, after Shanghai said it had almost finished recovering thousands of deceased pigs from its main waterway.

The ducks were fished out of a section of river by authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, the official Xinhua news agency said.

They were then buried in plastic bags three metres underground, the report added. It did not specify how the ducks had died.

The report came after Shanghai officials said a cleanup was close to ending after an embarrassing pollution case which saw dead pigs floating down the city's main river, with the total number recovered standing at more than 16,000.

"The city's water territory has already basically finished the work of fishing out the floating dead pigs," a Shanghai government statement released late on Sunday said.

China's commercial hub recovered 98 pigs on Sunday from the Huangpu river and 93 on Saturday, the authorities said, the first time the daily toll had fallen below a hundred in days.

The total number of dead pigs Shanghai had removed from the river, which supplies 22 per cent of the city's drinking water, had reached 10,924 as of Sunday afternoon.

A health worker lowers dead pigs into a processing pit at a hog farm in Zhuji city.  In the past two weeks, more than 16,000 pig carcasses have been pulled from the river system that feeds into Shanghai. Picture: AP

In addition, Jiaxing in neighbouring Zhejiang province, whose farmers are accused by Shanghai of dumping the dead pigs into the river upstream, had found 5528 carcasses, state radio said last week.

Mystery remains over the exact origin of the dead hogs. Jiaxing has insisted it was not the sole source, while Shanghai said its farms have not reported an epidemic which would kill pigs in such large numbers.

The images of dead pigs in China's commercial hub have proved a huge embarrassment for the city, which is seeking to grow as an international financial centre.

The scandal has highlighted China's troubles with food safety, adding the country's most popular meat to a growing list of food items rocked by controversy.

Animals that die from disease can end up in China's food supply chain if improperly disposed of, despite laws against the practice.

Samples of the dead pigs have tested positive for porcine circovirus, a common swine disease that does not affect humans.
 

Workers look for dead pigs in a river in Jiaxing city, in eastern China's Zhejiang province. Picture: AP

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Doughnut store serves bleach, sickens five

Customers at a Japanese doughnut store were accidentally served diluted bleach in their drinking water.

AT LEAST five people who were served bleach-laced water at a Mister Donut store in Japan had to be treated by medics, the operator said Monday.

Duskin Co, a Japanese cleaning company that also operates the US fast food franchise in the country, said one of its stores in Osaka served a diluted solution of bleach as drinking water on Friday.

The mishap occurred after a worker poured the solution into a pot used for drinking water as part of the cleaning procedure at closing up time the previous day, the company said in a statement.

On Friday, another worker who thought it had been properly cleaned poured the water out for customers.

Some 12 people complained about an "unpleasant sensation", the company said.

"Two people were taken to hospital directly from the store, and three others saw doctors on their own," said a Duskin spokesman, adding none of them was in a serous condition.

Duskin operates more than 1300 Mister Donut stores in Japan.

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Met museum accused of defrauding public

Confusion over the entry requirements to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is at the heart of a class-action lawsuit this month. Picture: Mary Altaffer Source: AP

BEFORE visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art can stroll past the priceless collection, they must first deal with the ticket line and the "recommended" $25 adult admission.

Many people, especially foreign tourists, either don't see it, don't understand it or don't question it. If they ask, they are told the fee is merely a suggested donation: You can pay what you wish but you must pay something.

Some who choose to pay less than the full price pull out a $10 or $5 bill. Some fork over a buck or loose change. Those who balk at paying anything at all are told they won't be allowed in unless they pay something, even a penny.

"I just asked for one adult general admissions and he just said, '$25,'" says Richard Johns, a high school maths teacher from Little Rock, Arkansas, who paid the full price at the museum this past week. "It should be made clear that it is a donation you are required to make. Especially for foreign tourists who don't understand. Most people don't know it."

Confusion over what's required to enter one of the world's great museums, which draws more than 6 million visitors a year, is at the heart of a class-action lawsuit this month accusing the Met of scheming to defraud the public into believing the fees are required.

The lawsuit contends that the museum uses misleading marketing and training of cashiers to violate an 1893 New York state law that mandates the public should be admitted for free at least five days and two evenings per week. In exchange, the museum gets annual grants from the city and free rent for its building and land along pricey Fifth Avenue in Central Park.

Museum spokesman Harold Holzer denied any deception and said a policy of requiring visitors to pay at least something has been in place for more than four decades. "We are confident that the courts will see through this insupportable nuisance lawsuit."

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City attracts more than 6 million visitors a year. Picture: Mary Altaffer

The suit seeks compensation for museum members and visitors who paid by credit card over the past few years.

"The museum was designed to be open to everyone, without regard to their financial circumstances," said Arnold Weiss, one of two attorneys who filed the lawsuit on behalf of three museum-goers, a New Yorker and two tourists from the Czech Republic. "But instead, the museum has been converted into an elite tourist attraction."

Among the allegations are that third-party websites do not mention the recommended fee, and that the museum sells memberships that carry the benefit of free admission, even though the public is already entitled to free admission.

Lined up to testify is a former museum supervisor who oversaw and trained the Met's admissions cashiers from 2007 to 2011. Michael Hiller, the other attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the supervisor trained cashiers to encourage visitors to pay the full freight by saying things like "you must realise it is very expensive to run the museum." He will also say that in 2010-2011 the term on the sign was changed from "suggested" to "recommended" because administrators believed it was a stronger word that would encourage people to pay more.

Mr Holzer denied the former employee's allegations. He also said the basis for the lawsuit - that admission is intended to be free - is wrong because the state law the plaintiffs cited has been superceded many times and the city approved pay-what-you-wish admissions in 1970.

"The idea that the museum is free to everyone who doesn't wish to pay has not been in force for nearly 40 years," Mr Holzer said, adding, "Yes, you do have to pay something."

As to the wording change on the sign, he said the museum "actually thought at the time, and still thinks, that 'recommended' is softer than 'suggested,' so the former employee is quite wrong here."

New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs agreed to the museum's request in 1970 for a general admission as long as the amount was left up to individuals and that the signage reflected that. Similar arrangements are in place for other cultural institutions that operate on city-owned land and property and receive support from the city, such as the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Museum. It's also a model that's been replicated in other cities.

The Metropolitan Museum is one of the world's richest cultural institutions, with a US $2.58 billion ($2.46 billion) investment portfolio, and is not reliant on admissions fees to pay the majority of its bills. Only about 11 per cent of the museum's operating expenses were covered by admissions charges in the 2012 fiscal year. As a nonprofit organisation, the museum pays no income taxes.

Mr Holzer also noted that in the past fiscal year, 41 per cent of visitors to the museum paid the full recommended admission price - $25 for adults, $17 for seniors and $12 for students.

A random sampling of visitors leaving the museum found that there was a general awareness that "recommended" implied you could pay less than the posted price.

But Dan Larson and his son Jake, visiting the museum last week from Duluth, Minnesota, were unaware there was any room to negotiate the admission price. They paid the full $25 each for adult tickets.

"My understanding was you pay the recommended price," said Larson, 50. "That's clearly not displayed."

Alexander Kulessa, a 23-year-old university student from Germany, said friends who had previously visited New York tipped him off about the admission fee.

"They said, 'Don't pay $25,'" said Kulessa. "They said it will be written everywhere to pay $25 but you don't have to pay that. You don't even have to pay the student price."

For Colette Leger, a tourist from Toronto who visited the museum with her teenage daughter, paying the full $25 was worth every penny.

"It's a beautiful museum and I was happy to pay," she said.

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