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German hackers arrested in South Korea for extortion

South Korean police said on Thursday two German college students have been arrested for attempting to extort money from a local company after hacking its server to acquire business secrets.

Published: 17 December 2009 11:49 CET
German hackers arrested in South Korea for extortion
Photo: DPA

The National Police Agency said the two students in their early twenties were detained on December 9 when they met company officials in a Seoul hotel to receive money.

“They were arrested on charges of extortion and violating a law on the protection of industrial information,” an investigator at the agency’s Cyber Terror Response Centre told news agency AFP.

“The pair hacked the server of the company specialising in Internet networking and cyber security equipment to steal its business secrets,” he said.

They had demanded about 800 million won ($683,760) from the company while threatening to sell its secrets to other people, he said. Further details were not given.

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CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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