Nearly 560K foreign hacking attempts against S.Korean govt detected over past 6 yrs

The South Korean government has witnessed nearly 560,000 foreign hacking attempts into its key computer systems over the past six years, with a combined 43 per cent from China and the US, a report revealed on Tuesday.

According to the Interior Ministry report submitted to Rep. Lee Hae-sik of the main opposition Democratic Party, 558,674 hacking attempts into key government computer systems were detected between 2017 and July this year, reports Yonhap News Agency.

Since reaching 62,532 cases in 2017, such hacking attempts have been on an upward trend to amount to 94,980 in 2018, 124,754 in 2019, 108,810 in 2020 and 101,123 last year, the report showed.

Internet protocol analyses showed 127,908, or 22.9 per cent, of the hacking attempts detected were traced to China, while 113,086 cases, or 20.2 per cent, were found to be from the US, the report also showed.

Hacking attempts that originated in South Korea accounted for 8.5 per cent, followed by those in Russia at 4.7 per cent, Germany at 2.8 per cent and Brazil at 2.4 per cent.

A total of 40.9 per cent of the hacking attempts detected were aimed at information leakage, followed by information gathering at 16.5 per cent, according to the report.