South Korea’s military cyber command, established to counter external hacking attempts on the country’s military, may have been hacked, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports.
“It seems the server of the cyber command has been hacked,” an official at the South Korean military said on condition of anonymity. “We have to go through additional checkups to confirm the cyberattack and to find out who launched the cyberattack and what data have been leaked.”
The latest allegation comes out after Rep Kim Jin-pyo, a lawmaker of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, claimed that the cyber command was hacked in September.
He told Yonhap News Agency two months ago that the hacking targeted the “vaccine routing server” installed at the cyber command.
Kim, who is a member of the parliament’s national defense committee, then said that a malicious code was found and it appears to have taken advantage of the vulnerability of the routing server.
The server is examined with security on computers that the military has for internet-connection purposes.
Nearly 20,000 military computers are connected to the server.
Kim said in October that chances are “very low” that the hacking led to a leak of confidential information, given that the military’s intranet is not connected to the server.
The defense ministry later announced that malicious code has be identified and removed as a cautious measure, it separated the server from the network.
According to the source, there is a possibility that the military’s intranet may have been compromised due to the hacking which could force South Korea to rewrite its military operation plans.