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North Korean Hackers Stole U.S.-South Korean Military Plans, Lawmaker Says (nytimes.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tussle-continues dept.

North Korean hackers stole a vast cache of data, including classified wartime contingency plans jointly drawn by the United States and South Korea, when they breached the computer network of the South Korean military last year, a South Korean lawmaker said Tuesday (alternative source). From a report: One of the plans included the South Korean military's plan to remove the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, referred to as a "decapitation" plan, should war break out on the Korean Peninsula, the lawmaker, Rhee Cheol-hee, told reporters. Mr. Rhee, a member of the governing Democratic Party who serves on the defense committee of the National Assembly, said he only recently learned of the scale of the North Korean hacking attack, which was first discovered in September last year. It was not known whether any of the military's top secrets were leaked, although Mr. Rhee said that nearly 300 lower-classification confidential documents were stolen. The military has not yet identified nearly 80 percent of the 235 gigabytes of leaked data, he said.

2 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Timing is interesting by WrongMonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This hack took place just before the US election in November 2016. Which puts a different context to all rocket test launches that have happened since then. It suggests North Korea isn't just rattling sabers at an untested administration. They might actually have a larger scale plan.

  2. Can you be more specific? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This hack took place just before the US election in November 2016. Which puts a different context to all rocket test launches that have happened since then. It suggests North Korea isn't just rattling sabers at an untested administration. They might actually have a larger scale plan.

    I'm probably being dense here, but... can you be more specific about what is suggested or what might be their plan, instead of the innuendo?

    Innuendo is good when everyone is on the same page and the circumstances suggest something obvious, but I'm not getting it here.

    Right before the election, Hillary was the overwhelming favourite to win. Trump's win couldn't have been reasonably predicted, so how could the "timing" of the data incident lead to the larger scale plan?

    I would expect such a tremendous upset (the election) would cause NK to *change* their plans. Development and deployment of missiles doesn't happen overnight, so...

    What does this suggest? Can you be more specific?

    (Could it also be a crime of opportunity? Where some NK hacker "got lucky" and grabbed the data without being a targetted, planned and orchestrated event?)