December 18, 2009
South Korea is probing suspicions that North Korean hackers extracted details of a classified joint South Korean-U.S. war plan designed to deal with possible aggression by the communist state, a defense official in Seoul said Friday.
The suspected breach occurred late last month via an Internet Protocol address registered in China, a route North Korea is believed to use when collecting computer files from foreign networks, the official at the Ministry of National Defense said.
A South Korean officer has been reprimanded after he used an unsecured portable storage device to transfer the file explaining Operational Plan 5027 to a wired computer, said the official, who requested anonymity citing the sensitivity of the issue.
"The file did not contain the nuts and bolts of the plan, but we're continuing with our probe because we haven't ruled out the possibility that other files were tampered with," he said.
OPLAN 5027, crafted jointly by South Korea and the U.S., allows for the dispatch of nearly 700,000 U.S. troops to the Korean Peninsula should a full-fledged conflict arise here.
It also sets out wartime operational guidelines for the troops of the two countries. South Korea remains technically at war with North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce.
The U.S., which has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, is working with the ally to adopt a new plan that better accounts for instabilities in North Korea, including nuclear-related ones.
No palpable details concerning North Korea's hacking unit have come to light, but South Korea believes the North has military personnel that specialize in overseas hacking.
When the Web sites of major U.S. and South Korean government agencies sustained attacks in July, officials here pointed to North Korea as a highly likely suspect.
The attacks hastened South Korea's plan to launch a command dedicated to preparing the military for cyber warfare, which will be set up on Jan. 1.
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