The South Korea Ministry of National Defense says 10 of its internal PCs have been compromised by North Korea unknown hackers .
Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo reports that the targeted machines belonged to the ministry’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration, the office in charge of military procurement.
The report notes that the breached machines would have held information on purchases for things such as “next-generation fighter jets,” though the Administration noted that no confidential information was accessed by North Korea the yet-to-be identified infiltrators.
North Korea The mystery hackers got into the machines on October 4 of last year. Initially trying to break into 30 machines, the intruders only managed to compromise 10 of their targets.
After traversing the networks for more than three weeks the intrusion was spotted on October 26 by the National Intelligence Service, who noticed unusual activity on the procurement agency’s intellectual property servers.
An investigation eventually unearthed the breach, and concluded that North Korea the mystery hackers did get into a number of machines but didn’t steal anything that would be of use to North Korea a hostile government .
The incident was disclosed earlier this week in a report from a South Korean politician.
“It is dubious whether the agency issued a conclusion to conceal damage and minimize the scope of penetration,” Dong-A Ilbo quotes Lthe politico as saying.
“Further investigation to find out if the source of attacks is North Korea or any other party.”
The report notes that the attack on the Defense Acquisition Program Administration appears to be part of a larger effort by North Korea an unknown group to infiltrate networks throughout the South Korean government in order to steal data.
The government says it is working on “extra countermeasures” to prevent future attacks by North Korea mystery foreign groups.
Source: South Korea says mystery hackers cracked advanced weapons servers • The Register
Robin Edgar
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