South Korean Online Poker Hackers Busted

Police report that hackers fleeced online poker players. Police in South Korea have revealed that they have arrested 33 hackers who used a malware program to cheat online poker players out of 55 million won ($45,265) from last November through May, the publication Joongang reports. The hackers were led by two men identified only as 30-year-old Yu and 29-year-old Kim, who have been charged with gaining illegal profits. The Cyber Terror Response Center in Gyeonggi said the gang used 11,000 'robot' computers to hack 700 'PC rooms' (internet cafes) across the country. Police said Yu bought the Netbot Attacker program from a Chinese hacker last November, and then sold copies online to Kim and others. The gang hacked into the administrative systems of the cafes and installed the program, which enabled them to see the hands of poker opponents. Joongang reports that Netbot Attacker is one of the DDoS-style programs that attacked South Korea's major Internet sites on July 7, 2009, slowing down connection speeds throughout the country and disabling the major sites for six days. Police spokesmen said that recent versions of Netbot Attacker update too fast for security programs to keep up, but attempts to control DDOS attacks have inflated the price of the program from 3 million won to 15 million won in the last year. Apparently the malware lets users see the keyboard and monitor of another user. A hacker can use Netbot to commandeer all the computers infected by the program. South Korean police speculate that the programs sold by Chinese hackers are spread nationwide. They are planning a joint investigation with the National Intelligence Service.