S. Korea's military cyber command may have been hacked: source

SEOUL, Dec. 5 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's cyber command, established to counter external hacking attempts on the country's military, may have been hacked, a military source said Monday. "It seems the server of the cyber command has been hacked," an official at the South Korean military said on condition of anonymity. "We have to go through additional checkups to confirm the cyberattack and to find out who launched the cyberattack and what data have been leaked." If the hacking turned out to be true, it will be the first time that the South Korea's top military cyber agency got hacked since its founding in January 2010. The latest allegation comes out after Rep. Kim Jin-pyo, a lawmaker of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, claimed that the cyber command was hacked in September. He told Yonhap News Agency two months ago that the hacking targeted the "vaccine routing server" installed at the cyber command. Kim, who is a member of the parliament's national defense committee, then said that a malicious code was identified and it appears to have taken advantage of the vulnerability of the routing server. The server is tasked with security on computers that the military has for internet-connection purposes. Around 20,000 military computers are known to have been connected to the server. Kim said in October that chances are "very low" that the hacking led to a leak of confidential information, given that the military's intranet is not connected to the server. The defense ministry later announced it identified the intrusion of the malicious code into the system and as a cautious measure, it separated the server from the network. But according to the source, there is a possibility that the military's intranet may have been compromised due to the hacking which could force South Korea to rewrite its military operation plans. kdon@yna.co.kr (END)