An individual seems to be threatening the South Korean government with the confidential information associated with the country’s power plants and says that if the monetary demands are not met, the information will be released.
The Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) is being victimized by being attacked in December 2014. The group of attackers, by the name “Who am I = No nuclear power,” have been posting technical documentation and data regarding employees that happen to be over 10000.
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The hackers have released the user manual publicly for version 5 of general purpose Monte Carlo N-Particle computer code (MCPN5). The code is used for the transportation of particles such as neutrons, photons and electrons through a nuclear reactor core. The released document is free to be accessed with no restrictions at all.
South Korea – The base camp of the attackers
The information which is contained in the releases, the sixth cache of files as yet, is about the advanced power reactor (APR) 1400 at the Kori nuclear power plant and system plans; Yonhap news agency reported that the information was posted over Twitter by an anti-nuclear group based in Hawaii.
The group, however admitted that they committed the attack, but also said that it was done in a way where the safety of the power plants was not diminished. This is because there was an analogue protection system which could cause the reactor to be terminated safely.
Although the hacker ensemble stated that they were headquartered in Hawaii, further investigation done in the month of December unveiled the fact that the group was actually situated in South Korea.
Demand may amount to hundreds of millions of dollars
As what the news outlet revealed was that the attack was carried out to deter President Park from exporting nuclear reactors to places like Northern Europe, Southeast Asia and South America. The trick was to instill in the President’s mind the fear of the information being sold entirely.
Although, the attacker has not yet told as to how much ransom it wants, but it has indeed made one thing clear; if the government is aiming to save a few million dollars, it will actually end up losing a lot more than that.
The latest information that has been made public by KHNP does not reveal any data which is classified and that the data may have been gathered last year, the reason being that the information was leaked after the internal server has been completely separated due to stricter security measures.
