SEOUL, South Korea – A North Korean hacking group reportedly broke into the South Korean nuclear research center last month, the latest in a string of cyberattack attempts, a South Korean lawmaker said in a news conference on Friday.
According to Ha Tae-keung, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee, on May 14, the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute noticed an unidentified user access breaching its VPN system. The think tank blocked the attacker’s IP address and, as a countermeasure, improved its system security when it found out about this on May 31.
According to KAERI, the authorities are still investigating the extent of the hack.
Seoul-based cybersecurity firm IssueMakersLab carried out an analysis of the attackers’ IP addresses on Thursday and determined that one of the three addresses can be traced back to the infamous hacker group Kimsuky, known for its membership in the North Korean intelligence agency Reconnaissance General Bureau. Analysis revealed that it was the same address that targeted COVID-19 vaccine developers in South Korea last year.
“Kimsuky is a hacking group that was identified in 2011. We have seen their consistent hacking attempts against South Korean government agencies and several companies, ”Simon Choi, head of IssueMakersLab, told ABC News.
Analysts in South Korea carefully speculated that the hacking might have something to do with the North Korean leader’s vision for nuclear power generation. Previously, in 2014, Kimsuky succeeded in a hacking attack on the South Korean Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. Ltd.
“Given the power shortage and strong interest in energy self-sufficiency, it is reasonable to assume that North Korea might be involved in hacking the nuclear think tank,” Park Jiyoung, a nuclear physics expert at the Asan Institute in Seoul, told ABC News.
Cyber defense expert Lim Jong-in from the South Korean Graduate School of Information Technologies also saw reason enough for North Korea to discreetly access nuclear power plant data from the South Korean think tank.
“North Korea may have a wide range of data and technology for developing nuclear weapons, but it is very weak on energy plants,” Lim told ABC News. “KAERI has data on the small modular reactor and other electricity generating nuclear power plants that low-energy North Korea would be very interested in.”
KAERI is a national research institute that played a crucial role in the construction of South Korea’s own nuclear power plant and transferred nuclear technologies for practical applications to local industry.
In a speech in 2019, North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un mentioned the communist nation’s plan to develop nuclear power generation capacities. International intelligence agencies have been monitoring the country’s development of nuclear weapons using plutonium from the spent reactor fuel.
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