Teach a Boy to Phish…   - 4,418 Views, 3 Comments

According to authorities in Korea, the teenager, identified only by his surname ‘Kim’, managed to get personal and financial data from seventy-seven targets before he was ultimately caught.

Officials explained that “Through the fake bank homepage, Kim tricked Internet banking users to download hacking programs on their computers. After hacking into their computers for personal information, Kim pocketed about 900,000 won by selling the victims’ cyber money and game items.”

Now, 900,000 Korean won is roughly equivalent to 867.00 USD, which may not sound like a lot to you, but to Kim it was a good start for feeding his Internet gaming addiction, which, police say, was the impetus for his turning to the dark side. By all accounts, previously Kim was a stellar student.

Now the moral here is not that Internet gaming leads to crime, but that even a high school student can scam Internet users with phishing tricks. And of course, the Internet knows no boundaries. Kim’s victims could have (and may have) as easily been in Europe, the U.S., or anywhere else there is an Internet connection, as in Korea.
Of course, perhaps Mr. Kim is related to Ms. Kim - you know, Dog Poop Girl, of Internet dog poop fame, and he was really only trying to raise some money to help pay for some much-needed therapy for her.