Bureau 121 () is a North Korean

cyberwarfare Cyberwarfare is the use of cyberattack, cyber attacks against an enemy State (polity), state, causing comparable harm to actual warfare and/or disrupting vital computer systems. Some intended outcomes could be espionage, sabotage, propaganda, ...

agency, and the main unit of the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) of North Korea's

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

. It conducts offensive cyber operations, including espionage and cyber-enabled finance crime. According to American authorities, the RGB manages clandestine operations and has six bureaus. Cyber operations are thought to be a cost-effective way for North Korea to maintain an asymmetric military option, as well as a means to gather intelligence; its primary intelligence targets are South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

History

Bureau 121 was created in 1998.

Targets and methods

The activities of the agency came to public attention in December 2014 when Sony Pictures canceled the opening of its movie '' The Interview'' after its computers had been hacked. Bureau 121 has been blamed for the cyber breach, but North Korea has rejected this accusation. Much of the agency's activity has been directed at South Korea. Prior to the attack at Sony, North Korea was said to have attacked more than 30,000 PCs in South Korea affecting banks and broadcasting companies as well as the website of South Korean President Park Geun-hye. North Korea has also been thought to have been responsible for infecting thousands of South Korean smartphones in 2013 with a malicious gaming application. The attacks on South Korea were allegedly conducted by a group then called DarkSeoul Gang and estimated by the computer security company Symantec to have only 10 to 50 members with a "unique" ability to infiltrate websites. American authorities believe that North Korea has military offensive cyber operations capability and may have been responsible for malicious cyber activity since 2009. As part of its sophisticated set-up, cells from Bureau 121 are believed to be operating around the world. One of the suspected locations of a Bureau 121 cell is the Chilbosan Hotel in

Shenyang Shenyang,; ; Mandarin pronunciation: ; formerly known as Fengtian formerly known by its Manchu language, Manchu name Mukden, is a sub-provincial city in China and the list of capitals in China#Province capitals, provincial capital of Liaonin ...

, China. South Korea has also repeatedly blamed Bureau 121 for conducting GPS jamming aimed at South Korea. The most recent case of jamming occurred on 1 April 2016.

Structure

Bureau 121 (121국) consists of the following units as of 2019: * Lab 110 (110연구소) ** Office 98 ** Office 414 (414연락사무소) ** Office 35 (35실) * Unit 180 (180부대) * Liaison Office 91 (91연락소) * Liaison Office 128 (128연락소) * Liaison Office 413 (413연락소)

Staffing

Bureau 121 is the largest (more than 600 hackers) and most sophisticated unit in the RGB. According to a report by

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

, Bureau 121 is staffed by some of North Korea's most talented computer experts and is run by the Korean military. A defector indicated that the agency has about 1,800 specialists. Many of the bureau's

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

s are hand-picked graduates of the University of Automation,

Pyongyang Pyongyang () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of North Korea, where it is sometimes labeled as the "Capital of the Revolution" (). Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. Accordi ...

and spend five years in training. A 2021 estimate suggested that there may be over 6,000 members in Bureau 121, with many of them operating in other countries, such as Belarus, China, India, Malaysia, and Russia. While these specialists are scattered around the world, their families benefit from special privileges at home.

Alleged operations

* 2013 South Korea cyberattack *November 2014 Sony Pictures hack *February 2016 Bangladesh Bank robbery * 2015–2016 SWIFT banking hack *May 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack

References