North Korean hackers have stolen a large cache of military documents from South Korea, including a plan to assassinate North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.
The compromised documents include wartime contingency plans jointly drawn up by the U.S. and South Korea, as well as reports on the senior commanders of South Korea’s allies.
Plans for the South’s special forces were reportedly accessed, along with information on significant power plants and military facilities in the South.
Rhee Cheol-hee, a South Korean lawmaker, said the hack originated from his country’s defense ministry. Mr. Rhee is a member of South Korea’s ruling party, and sits on its parliament’s defense committee. He claims some 235 gigabytes of military documents have been stolen from the Defense Integrated Data Center, and that 80% of the documents have yet to be identified.
So far, the South Korean defense ministry has refused to comment on the embarrassing breach of classified material that occurred in September of 2016—though the breadth of the attack is just now coming to light. (In May, South Korea issued a statement acknowledging a large amount of data had been stolen and that North Korea may have instigated the cyber attack – but gave no details about the nature of the compromised data.)
News that Pyongyang is likely to possess U.S. – South Korea war plans is sure to escalate tensions between the nations which are at an all time high after repeated missile tests launched by the North and the continued war of words by leaders of both nations.
