As much of the world anxiously awaits North Korea’s next step with its bellicose military threats, a well-known hacking group has taken aim at the Asian nation’s unpredictable leader and social networks.
Anonymous has poked fun at Kim Jong-un, and took over several of the nation’s official websites. The sites include a Twitter (News - Alert) and Flickr account linked to a state-run North Korean news agency.
One of the hacked sites shows Kim Jong-un “with pig ears and a Mickey Mouse picture on his chest and says he is ‘threatening world peace with ICBMs and Nuclear weapons,’" according to a report from Ars Technica.
North Korea has threatened to attack several U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the continental United States, Hawaii and Guam.
“Because of North Korea's new threats today we are forced to contact you again,” a posting from Pastebin claiming to be from Anonymous said. “Within this release we also take the chance to set some things straight about our goals, because it seems some web citizens didn't really get it right.”
“You just went full retarded! Never go full retarded,” they told the North Korean leader, as they also questioned his manhood.
In its statement, Anonymous also criticized the United States for trying to be “the police of the world” – and claimed the group was going to “manage this the peaceful way." The hackers also made anti-Semitic and anti-capitalistic statements.
"Citizens of North Korea, South Korea, USA, and the world Don't allow your governments to separate you. We are all one. We are the people," the statement added. "Our enemies are the dictators and regimes, our goals are freedom and peace and democracy. United as one, divided by zero, we can never be defeated!"
Last month, Anonymous threatened cyber-attacks against North Korea's data, The Inquirer reported. The most recent incidents apparently used Distributed Denial of Service attacks to mess up the North Korean websites, news reports said.
Though many analysts doubt North Korea will launch a missile attack against nearby or distant nations, it does have a nuclear arsenal. Fox News also reported this week that North Korea started to move at least one intermediate range missile to another location in the nation, perhaps the East Coast. A second intermediate-range missile was already on the East Coast of North Korea, news reports claim.
"North Korea has nuclear capabilities, so the full range of their arsenal is of concern to the United States and to our South Korean allies," Pentagon spokesman George Little was quoted recently in a story carried by TMCnet. The U.S. military has taken some precautions.
"Some of the actions they've taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat to the interests, certainly of our allies, starting with South Korea and Japan and also the threats that the North Koreans have leveled directly at the United States regarding our base in Guam, threatened Hawaii, threatened the West Coast of the United States," Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel warned on Wednesday.