Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Kim’s hackers steal Trump & South Korea’s war plans
Cyber attack nets military secrets
NORTH Korean hackers have stolen military secrets from arch enemy South Korea – including US war plans.
Rhee Cheol-hee, a South Korean lawmaker, said yesterday the information was taken from his country’s defence ministry.
The stolen documents allegedly include wartime contingency plans drawn up by the US and its ally South Korea.
Reports to their senior commanders were compromised, along with information on significant power plants, special forces and military facilities in the South.
It was reported the plans had been recently updated to include “beheading operations” – strikes designed to take out North Korean chiefs, including leader Kim Jong-un.
Mr Rhee, of South Korea’s ruling party, claimed 235 gigabytes of documents had been stolen from their Defence Integrated Data Centre – 80% have yet to be identified.
Seoul claims it has been hit by a barrage of cyber attacks ordered by Kim in recent years, with many targeting government offices and data.
The despot is believed to have specially trained hackers based overseas, including in China.
North Korea was said to be behind a raid on Bangladesh’s central bank that netted $81million (£61.3million) and of masterminding the Wannacry ransomware that targeted the NHS earlier this year.
Kim is said to have 6,000 hackers at his disposal, targeting data all over the world. He was famously blamed for a hack on Sony Pictures two years ago, following the release of Hollywood film The Interview, which depicted his assassination.
The US and North Korea have been at loggerheads over Kim’s nuclear activities, with the US pressing for a halt to missile tests and Pyongyang vowing to continue. Donald Trump threatened to destroy the North if it menaced the US and said its leader “is on a suicide mission”. Pyongyang has consistently denied the hacking claims.