SKorea: North may have prepared zombies for global attack

By Alex Jensen

SEOUL

North Korea has been able to infect one in five smartphones owned by South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) since late last month, according to the agency itself Tuesday.

Seoul has been in a state of heightened alert since the North's nuclear test in January and subsequent rocket launch, which have been punished with strengthened global sanctions.

While the North has consistently denied its allegedly widespread hacking activities, it is believed to have followed up its last two nuclear tests, in 2009 and 2013, with cyber attacks against South Korean government, media and financial organizations.

The pattern appears to have continued based on the NIS' statement outlining new findings -- including malware links being sent to officials in the South, whose identities were not revealed.

Smartphones that were infected would have made available phone and text records to hackers.

North Korea is suspected of hijacking devices around the world for some time, but the NIS also claimed that tens of thousands of computers were turned into "zombies" last year in over 120 countries -- such machines could theoretically be used for cyber attacks.

With new anti-terror legislation in the South set to hand greater powers of investigation to the NIS, critics of the agency have watched its moves with suspicion in a country that only truly embraced democracy from the late 1980s. The NIS attracted condemnation for meddling in the 2012 presidential election, which was won by current leader Park Geun-hye.