South Korea's Ministry of Defence has announced that 10 of its critical systems holding information on the military's weapon systems had been compromised by unknown hackers.
The incident occurred in October where attackers attempted to gain access to 30 of South Korea's important systems but were only successful in 10 instances.
The incident was first reported by Dong-A Ilbo, a South Korean news outlet, following an announcement by Rep. Lee Jong-myung, a Liberty Korea Party member at the National Defense Committee, on Monday.
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The attack began on 4 October and ran for three weeks before being discovered on 26 October after the National Intelligence Service noticed suspicious IP server traffic at the Arms Procurement Agency.
It's believed that the attackers hacked Liberty Korea Party Rep. Baek Seung-joo's email account, as the event coincided with the date of the system breach, and used his system to infiltrate the government servers.
"It is dubious whether the agency issued a conclusion to conceal damage and minimize the scope of penetration," said Rep. Lee. "Further investigation to find out if the source of attacks is North Korea or any other party."
The government's cyber security capabilities are being questioned following the successful attack. The attempts on the servers made up only one branch of attacks made on South Korea's foreign affairs facilities including the Korean presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, the National Assembly and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration.
The reports maintain that whatever data was leaked would be of no use to a hostile government wishing to launch further attacks on South Korea.
There will be further investigations to uncover the identity of the attackers, with North Korea being alleged as a possible culprit.
