Unknown attacker hacks into a laptop containing classified intelligence

While South Korea has faced many cyberwarfare attacks in the past, the most recent attack has been successful in extracting classified intelligence.

South Korea announced on December 18 that it was investigating a hacking attack that netted secret defense plans with the United States and may have been carried out by North Korea.

The suspected hacking occurred late last month when a South Korean officer failed to remove a USB device when he switched a military computer from a restricted-access intranet to the Internet.

The plans are said to include an out­line of Seoul’s and Washington’s strat­egy in the event of war on the Korean Peninsula housed in an 11-page document called OPLAN 5027 used to brief military officials.

This doc­u­ment included details of mil­i­tary oper­a­tions involv­ing South Korean and U.S. troops should North Korea con­duct a pre-emptive strike or attempt to invade South Korea. One source stated that the doc­u­ment included details about the 700,000 US troops that would be used in the event of a full-scale war. It is also thought to include a list of tar­gets in North Korea.

"Eleven pages of Powerpoint slides explaining the war plan for visiting military officers have been hacked, not the whole content of the contingency plan," a South Korean military official was quoted as saying.

Sources close to the event say that the sys­tems secu­rity soft­ware should have issued a warn­ing mes­sage if an exter­nal mem­ory device is inserted into a mil­i­tary com­puter, but hack­ers may have been able to steal the mil­i­tary secrets because a mil­i­tary offi­cer neglected these warn­ing mes­sages and broke regulations.


[Submitted by Christo [PCD]]



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