Nearly 100,000 cyberattacks hit foreign ministry, affiliates in 6 months

Cyberattacks targeting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its affiliated agencies nearly tripled in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year, data showed, raising fresh concerns about the security of sensitive diplomatic information following a recently disclosed data breach at the ministry.

According to data provided by Rep.

Kim Joon-hwan of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, cyberattacks targeting the foreign ministry, the Korea Foundation and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) totaled 96,483 between January and June, far outpacing the 73,785 attempts recorded across the entire previous year.

By organization, the Korea Foundation bore the brunt of the attacks with 70,043 cases, followed by the foreign ministry with 16,254 and KOICA with 10,186.

By attack type across all three agencies, attempted server data hacking topped the list at 49,602 cases, followed by server vulnerability information gathering attempts with 18,852, website hacking attempts with 17,844, and email account takeover and phishing with 4,535.

By origin, attacks from untra ...