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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.

11 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Well, if the plans are _this_ badly protected by sittingnut · · Score: 4, Insightful

    actually it is impossible for south to fight north without capital seoul, which is well within north's artillery range, getting destroyed and million getting killed within minutes. north has a huge well entrenched artillery advantage just because of that.

    so whenever you hear warmongering talk from usa, check the south korea media to see how people in seoul are responding to same news, if they are not worried, all the warmonger talk is just talk, not serious. probably aimed at american audience for some political reason.
    everyone knows this, but american media pretends as if all the warmongering talk is real.

  2. I have a super secret copy of the plans by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    It's one page that reads "Drop lots and lots of bombs".

    Seriously. It's North Bloody Korea. They can barely keep their army fed let alone fight a war with our nation. NK is a hostage situation. As soon as we move they start slinging rockets at South Korea because their leadership knows every last one of them is going to hang.

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    1. Re:I have a super secret copy of the plans by rainer_d · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sure, they'll go down. They know this.

      But they'll also make sure to take as many Yanks and South Koreans with them as possible. And iif you consider they had 70 years to dig themselves in, you'll realize that the prize will be very, very high.

      They have 15k artillery canons within a couple of dozens of km from Seoul. And they're not sitting in an open field. They're sitting in armored tunnels drilled into a granite mountain.

      The only way to take those down is to throw a couple of really big nukes. And then you also take out Seoul at the same time.

      --
      Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
    2. Re:I have a super secret copy of the plans by rahvin112 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Artillery in tunnels like that is actually pretty easy to destroy with a missile, guided bomb or a fuel air bomb that can suck the air out of the tunnel. Reinforced tunnels like that haven't been secure for 30+ years when they developed the first bombs to take them out. And by they I mean everyone, pretty much every major military has the weapons to take out hardened bunkers like that, even Israel bought them after the last war with Hezbollah.

    3. Re:I have a super secret copy of the plans by rahvin112 · · Score: 2

      Jesus if you are gonna just make numbers up why post? NK has no where near 5 Million troops. They barely have a 1:1 match against the south's 600+K troops when you factor in capability. When you factor in starvation, lack of training and willingness to surrender you'll like see NK forces collapse as soon as the SK begins pushing back.

      Just remember, they called Saddam's 1+million soldier invincible too. The US millitary bought 50,000 body bags for the first gulf war and friendly fire killed more US troops than Iraqis did. The largest tank battle since WWII resulted in no US casualties caused by enemy fire.

      A war on the Korean peninsula will likely go down the same way, except rather than eating dog food like the Iraqi soliders the NK soldiers will wish they had the dog food and were as well fed as the Iraqis.

  3. 235GB by thegreatbob · · Score: 2

    I wonder how they managed to download 235GB of data while it was still remotely relevant.

    Goes back to work imagining a datacenter full of hungry people trying to eat the dial-up modems...

    --
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  4. What plans? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Funny

    What plans? You mean, if North Korean attacks, bomb them back to the Stone Age - meaning, "last week".

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    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  5. 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.

  6. 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?)

    1. Re:Can you be more specific? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      No offense intended, but you do realize you look like an idiot when you're still pushing the "Russians haxored the 2016 election to make Trump win" thing at this point, right?

      Yes, like most Americans, I believe Russia intervened on Trump's behalf in the 2016 election.

      http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/22/...

      and the raw data...

      http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2...

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  7. Re:Well, if the plans are _this_ badly protected by WrongMonkey · · Score: 2

    These plans were stolen over a year ago. Considering events since then, does North Korea seem deterred?