South Korea still struggling with hacking attacks on nuclear power plant systems

According to South Korean administrators, hackers are still trying to shut down nuclear plants with cyber attacks. However, it would concern attacks on non-critical systems: important operations are controlled with systems that are not connected to the internet.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power director Cho Seok has said the state-owned company is taking steps to prevent hackers from disrupting nuclear power plants, Reuters said in a statement. Despite ongoing cyber-attacks, nuclear power plants would operate normally and there would be no security threat. The hackers would focus their attacks on non-critical systems within the nuclear power plants.

The Korean administrators have put a team on standby that can intervene if danger threatens. They will keep an eye on the systems at least until the end of the year. The reason would be that a hacker has threatened to destroy reactors if South Korea does not give in to the demands they have made. For the time being, however, the authorities assume that the hackers only want to sow unrest with their attacks.

Last week it appeared that hackers had penetrated the systems of the nuclear power plant operator. Even then, according to the authorities, non-critical data was stolen and the functioning of the nuclear reactors was not in danger. Incidentally, the hackers are said to have penetrated more than a year and a half ago, when the critical business operations were disconnected from the internet.

It is not yet known who is behind the hack, but traces do lead to a Chinese city near North Korea. The northern neighbor has been a suspect for some time and it is known that North Korean hackers sometimes carry out their hacking attacks across the border with China. In addition, the Stalinist country is embroiled in a heated argument with the United States, an ally of South Korea, because of the break-in on Sony’s systems. North Korea has denied involvement in the hacks.