By Jun Ji-hye
The Agency for Defense Development (ADD) is being criticized for its sluggish response to allegations that a considerable number of its military secrets were leaked in an alleged cyber attack.
The military’s cyber investigation team recently began its probe after securing circumstantial evidence that somebody tried to hack emails of some ADD staffers.
The ADD is a key research institute for the nation’s military.
The investigation came as Rep. Kim Young-joo of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) claimed: “Putative hackers from China and North Korea planted malignant coded to control the ADD’s server and the personal computers of its members, and took classified materials away.”
She said Thursday that almost 750 pages of documents were leaked, including information about an unmanned aerial vehicle that is currently under development, as well as function test results of the Shingung portable surface-to-air missile.
“That is highly sensitive information that only the ADD members and those from defense industries can have access to,” Kim said.
It is reported that the agency first detected the possible leakage of information on March 24, but tried to cover it up. The agency asked the military’s investigation bureau to begin a probe only after the incident was made public by the lawmaker and alongside other media reports.
It justified its decision for not immediately reporting on the grounds that “the information leaked is not categorized as classified material.”
“We have a security network structure, meaning it is impossible to penetrate into the internal server,” ADD spokesman Baek Yoon-hyung told reporters.
Rep. Kim said that the incident shows government officials’ bad practice _ “locking the stable door after the horse is stolen.”
“The government should implement an overall inspection of the whole security network regarding defense affairs,” said Kim, saying there is a greater possibility that Pyongyang tried to conduct cyber attacks against it.
According to the material that the ADD submitted to the National Assembly in 2006, the Stalinist state attempted to hack the agency’s server about 10,000 times between October 2005 and September 2006.