Jun Ji-hye, a reporter at the finance desk of The Korea Times, focuses primarily on economic policy and government agencies, mainly covering the Ministry of Finance and Economy, the Ministry of Budget and Planning, the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service. She previously covered financial authorities, including the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service, and earlier worked on the political, city and business desks, reporting on a wide range of issues.
PCs of military laboratory infected with malicious code
By Jun Ji-hye
Some personal computers of the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) were infected with malicious code capable of remote control, according to officials of the Ministry of National Defense, Thursday.
“The PCs infected were those used for information searches and sending or receiving e-mails,” said an official. “The malicious code that penetrated the PCs via Internet Protocol (IP) in Hong Kong, has a function of remote control.”
The ADD is a key research institute for the nation’s military.
In explaining if there was any fear of leakage of military secrets, he stressed that the institute’s intranet server and Internet network are totally separated.
“It is impossible for the malicious code to penetrate into an internal secure network,” said the official..
The announcement followed an investigation of joint forces ― the Defense Security Command, the Cyber Command and the National Intelligence Service ― into allegations that a considerable number of ADD’s military secrets were leaked in a cyber attack.
Rep. Kim Young-joo of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy argued in early April, “Putative hackers from China and North Korea planted malignant codes to control the ADD’s server and the personal computers of its members, and took classified material away.”
She said almost 750 pages of documents were leaked.
The joint investigation team carried out the probe April 10-25.
The official said that the material to which the lawmaker referred did not include military secrets, but general data produced by researchers in 2011.
But the team fell short of establishing who leaked the data.
“We checked Internet log records for the past two years and questioned ADD researchers and people working for the concerning industries who were involved with producing documents. But we could not confirm who leaked the material,” said the official.
The team also failed to find the person who made the report to the lawmaker’s office.
“Somebody made a report to the lawmaker via email. But that was a stolen email address,” he said.
The investigators added that they will transfer the case to the prosecution as the people involved in the stolen email address and contacting Rep. Kim’s office were apparently civilians.
“The prosecution will continue the investigation,” the official said. “For its part, ADD will introduce a malicious code detection system at the earliest possible date and carry out security education for its researchers.”
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