Cyber Defense Command May Debut This Year
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
South Korea could establish a cyber defense command that will defend military networks against computer attacks by the year's end, officials at the Ministry of National Defense said Thursday.
The cyber warfare command was originally scheduled to be launched early next year, but military authorities think it should be set up earlier to counter increasing computer hacking attempts, they said.
The country's military computer networks face about 95,000 reported cases per day on average, the Defense Security Command (DSC) said.
``There is an urgent need to launch a cyber defense command to counter possible cyber attacks from North Korea, China or other countries,'' a ministry official said, asking not to be identified. ``Details on the timeline and the command structure have yet to be fixed.''
Sources say the command is expected to have approximately 500 personnel from the DSC and the three military branches.
In July, South Korean government and industrial computer networks faced massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks for several days.
Some intelligence sources from South Korea and the United States blamed North Korea for the attack, though no solid evidence has been released to support that claim.
North Korea is known to operate a cyber warfare unit that specializes in hacking into South Korean and U.S. military networks to extract classified information.
Against that backdrop, South Korean and U.S. military authorities signed a memorandum of understanding in May to work together on information assurance and computer network defense by creating a mechanism to assure the freer sharing of information and technologies.
The agreement will help South Korea improve its cyber-defense capability and increase interoperability on joint cyber-defense operations and information-sharing after Seoul takes over wartime operational control of its troops from the U.S. military in 2012, ministry officials said.