It has come to light that the transition team of President Lee Myung-bak was hacked five years ago by North Korean sources.
According to a government source, computers in offices of the transition team was hacked in 2008.
“At the time, about 400 computers were suspected to have been hacked and investigations showed that North Korea was behind the assault. Appropriate action was taken,” the source said.
Details, including whether or not classified information leaked out of the computers, were not available.
This revelation was made amid speculations that North Korea had infiltrated the press room of the transition team of President-elect Park Geun-hye in the middle of the week.
As in the case of President Lee, Park chose the Korea Banking Institute in Samchong-dong in downtown Seoul.
Information security officials have been on the alert, mainly because of what had happened five years ago, fearing that North Korean agents may try to infiltrate the operations of the transition team.
The fact that North Korea is constantly planning cyber attacks on South Korea has long become a reality.
It has been known that North Korea’s Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces has been utilizing its polices forces and secret agents of the Labor Party to conduct elaborate operations for launching cyber attacks.
Following the hacking of Lee’s transition team, North Korea engaged in DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks on July 7, 2009 and March 4, 2011.