North Korea Hacked Space Agency India Just Before Moon Landing. While India prepared for a historic attempt to land on the moon last summer, the space agency was hacked, presumably by North Korea.
The Indian cybersecurity officer Security Brigade tells the newspaper that at least five primary government services in India have been hacked in recent months. This would also have been a nuclear power plant.
Officials opened unsuspecting phishing emails, giving the attackers access to computer systems. It is not clear whether the hackers wanted to sabotage or steal technology and knowledge.
The attackers are said to have used malicious software called DarkSeoul. That would be a weapon of the North Korean hacker group Lazarus. Lazarus is also held responsible for a digital break-in at Sony in 2014.
WannaCry’s hostage software, which locked hundreds of thousands of computers around the world in 2017, was allegedly created and deployed by Lazarus.
Just before the authentic landing on the moon it went wrong. About 2 kilometres above the surface, the Indian space institute ISRO lost contact with the probe. The lunar lander was later recovered, but the communication could not be restored.
India could thus have become the fourth country to land on the moon. Only the United States, China and Russia have achieved that for the time being.
No people or scouts have landed at the south pole of the moon – the goal of the Indian mission. It is unlikely that the moon landing failed due to the North Korean hack.