Report: Nearly 560,000 foreign hacking attempts against govt. detected over past 6 yrs

The government has seen nearly 560,000 outside hacking attempts into its key computer systems over the past six years, with a combined 43 percent from China and the United States, a report showed 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.

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 percent, of the hacking attempts detected were traced to China, while 113,086 cases, or 20.2 percent, were found to be from the US, the report also showed.

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

A total of 40.9 percent of the hacking attempts detected were aimed at information leakage, followed by information gathering at 16.5 percent, according to the report. (Yonhap)