In a major attack against the Chinese government, a hacking group linked to the Korean peninsula gained access to embassy data in the DPRK and more than a dozen other locations around the world, the Beijing-based security firm Qihoo 360 said Monday.

According to the company, a group known as DarkHotel compromised more than 200 servers of a domestic VPN provider used by Chinese government agencies in 19 countries, as well as Shanghai and Beijing, using a malicious software update to take control of computers.