A hacker has broken into computers at sensitive South Korean research institutes and government agencies, cyber security authorities said Saturday.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said the anonymous hacker had broken into computers at the Agency for Defence Development, which develops weapons, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, the Korea Institute for Defence Analysis and three other government agencies.
"NCSC recently found some PCs at state agencies have been contaminated by a variation of Peep Trojan hacking programme and taken emergency measures," the agency said in a statement. A total of 64 PCs were affected.
The government agencies included the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, the maritime police agency and the agency for small and mid-sized firms.
The cyber security centre, in co-operation with the defence ministry, National Police Agency and the information ministry, blocked the hacker's posting site to prevent sensitive data being stolen.
"Currently, there is no danger of data being stolen as the site which was used by the hacker has been blocked," the cyber security centre said.
But it failed to mention whether any information had been stolen before they took action.
The author of Peep Trojan, 30-year-old Taiwanese Wang Ping-an, was arrested in May by Taiwan's Internet crime investigation task force, the centre said.
Wang did not steal data himself but when he was unable to sell his data-stealing virus, he posted it on hackers' Web sites for free.
The virus operates in attached e-mail files and jumps into action when a user opens these files and the hacker can get access to the victim's computer data.
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