A group of state-funded hackers from North Korea are reported to have hacked a South Korea’s military database last September to gain access to 235 GB of sensitive data, including war plans. The leaked data includes ‘Operational Plan 5015’ which is considered as classified info to be used in case a world war three takes place between North and South Korea, backed by its US ally led by American President Donald Trump.
Rhee Choel Hee, a lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea leaked out the said info and added that the documents contained a decapitation attack plan on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Rhee, who is now a Member of Parliament’s Defense Committee, said that 80% of the leaked documents have to be identified yet. The staff working under Rhee added that a similar attack took place in May this year on Seoul’s military intranet. But the details of the hack were kept under wraps by the government for obvious reasons.
Readers of Cybersecurity Insiders have to notify that Pyongyang has more than 6800 strong units of trained cyber warfare specialists to launch cyber attacks on nations such as South Korea, US, UK, and Australia. Additionally, the country is known to hire ethical hackers from other nations on a freelance basis to conduct attacks in disguised form.
North Korea is already known for launching high profile cyber attacks such as the 2014 Sony Pictures Hack.
Very recently, the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull accused North Korea openly for hacking into one of his country’s defense contractors and stealing critical files. Dan Tehan, who leads the Ministry for Cyber Security, Australia claimed that more than 20% of cyber incidents in the last 20 months were found to have launched from North Korea.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that Kim Jong’s cyber army attempted to cyber attack US Power Grids with phishing emails containing malware. However, since, the federal government has already taken preventive measures to curb such attacks; a major damage was averted.
