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The Price of Superfast Internet: Botnets, Hacking…

One of the world’s most wired countries, South Korea, illustrates the downside of high speed internet and real name verification–an epidemic of hacking, data theft and botnets.
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One of the planet’s most connected countries, South Korea, is also plagued by hacking and data theft and is the Asia-Pacific’s leading host of P2P “botnets”–compromised, internet-connected computers typically used for illegal activities. Lightning-fast broadband and obligatory real name verification have a downside.

What’s the Big Idea?

The National Police Agency’s Cyber Terror Response Center is the frontline in South Korea’s growing struggle against computer and internet-related crime. A series of high-profile attacks this year have thrust cybercrime squarely into the public spotlight. Most attacks against Korean firms appear to originate in China, according to the center’s investigation director, Jung Suk-hwa.

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