No Sensitivity, No Response

The Gori nuclear power complex in South Korea.
The Gori nuclear power complex in South Korea.

 

Confidential documents of the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Corporation, such as power plant drawings, have been exposed to the public on the Internet again. This is the fourth time since Dec. 15.

A person identified only as the chairman of an anti-nuclear group in Hawaii disclosed documents relating to Gori Nuclear Power Plant Unit 2, Wolseong Unit 1, and the MCNP5 and BURN4 manuals via Twitter at 1:32am, Dec. 21.

The same Twitter account was used on December 18 and 19. The person also warned that he or she has 100,000 more sheets of data in hand and can disclose them at any time. The case is currently under investigation by the prosecution, and the corporation has repeated that there is no safety problem regarding the already-revealed documents.

Still, expert consensus is that the internal networks of the atomic power stations have already been compromised.

“The logs that can be monitored by the security system are limited, and stealthy access is possible by circumventing the systems where logs are left,” said professor Lee Kyung-ho at the Department of Cyber Defense of Korea University.

“Even those isolated nuclear power plant control systems have to be connected to the web when they are upgraded,” Seoul National University nuclear engineering professor Seo Kyun-ryeol added, continuing, “The possibility of virus infection has to be checked.” The hacker claimed on Dec. 19 that no trace is left, and any attempt to find any would be useless.

In the meantime, it was found at the parliamentary inspection of the administration in October that a total of 1,843 hacking attempts were made against nuclear power plants in Korea between 2010 and this year. Also found were inappropriate practices such as a lack of passwords and vaccine program updates for computer systems in the plants, use of unauthorized USB drives, and the exposure of administrator pages and backup files.

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