Private info on U.S. troops in South Korea exposed

Intruders breached the personal data of thousands of U.S. troops posted to South Korea, according to Pentagon officials. The foreign country and its northern neighbor allegedly have been hacking each other’s’ computers and freezing each other’s’ networks since the U.N. imposed sanctions on North Korea for conducting nuclear tests earlier this year.

“The department is currently investigating reports that the personal information of U.S. forces was compromised in recent cyberattacks against [South] Korea,” Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, a Pentagon spokesman told The Washington Times.

The compromises coincided with the anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and are widely believed to be the work of North Korean state-sponsored hackers.

The breach also affected an estimated 2 million members of South Korea’s ruling political party.

Pickart said the Pentagon’s definition of personal data includes names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of service members.

The intrusions exploited flaws in software that can allow malicious programs to be downloaded onto affected computers.

“The use of the data dump tactic indicates the attack was likely done by a politically motivated group,” rather than state-sponsored hackers, according to the British technology news website V3.