North Korean hackers likely stole dozens of classified military documents after breaching a South Korean defense contractor’s database, a South Korea lawmaker said Tuesday.
Hackers breached a database in April belonging to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd. and subsequently pilfered about 40,000 files, including about 60 classified military documents, according to Kyeong Dae-soo, a member of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party.
“We are almost 100 percent certain that North Korean hackers were behind the hacking and stole the company’s sensitive documents,” Mr. Keyong told Reuters.
Among the classified documents compromised in the breach are blueprints, shipbuilding technology, weapons system and test data related to submarine and destroyers involving South Korea’s military operations, Mr. Keyong’s office told CNN.
The breach was discovered by South Korea’s Ministry of Defense and was the subject of an intelligence briefing held with lawmakers last week, the office said.
A representative for Daewoo, one of South Korea’s biggest defense contractors, told Reuters that they were unaware of the breach before Tuesday and would be reviewing Mr. Kyeong’s remarks.
The South Korean Defense Ministry declined to comment on the breach but said it is working to strengthen military security, CNN reported.
Defense officials who analyzed the breach concluded that North Korean hackers were responsible because the method of intrusion was similar to previous cyberattacks attributed to North Korea, Mr. Kyeong told Reuters.
Despite being largely isolated from the rest the world, North Korea has been credited with conducting a handful of recent high-profile cyberattacks targeting South Korea, the U.S. and its allies. The FBI notably blamed North Korea for the 2014 data breach suffered by Sony Pictures Entertainment, and U.K. Minister of State for Security Ben Wallace last week pegged Pyongyang with the WannaCry cyberattack that infected computer systems in over 150 countries in May, including a third of Britain’s publicly funded medical centers.
Earlier last month, meanwhile, a member of South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party said that North Korean hackers likely stole about 235 gigabytes of data from a South Korean Ministry of National Defense computer network in September 2016, including 226 designated as “secret,” 42 as “confidential” and 27 for “official use only.”
North Korean official did not immediately comment publicly on the Daewoo breach but has previously denied conducting cyberattacks abroad.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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