Individuals claiming to be from the collective hacker group, Anonymous, claim to have hacked into North Korea’s intra-net and stolen secret military documents, which they say will be released on June 25.
In a press release posted on the website Pastebin, the hackers said: To the tyrants of the North Korean Government… a notice…. Previously we said we would penetrate the intranet and private networks of North Korea. And we were successful.”
The message continued: “Your major missile documentation and residents, military documents show down is already in progress. Your attempt to cover this has been uncovered. We are partially sharing this information with the world” in a “memorandum of June 25.”
The group is labeling the operation #OpNorthKorea and the press release said the documents uncovered will be released at midnight Korea time on June 25. The date is significant in that it marks the anniversary of the start of the Korean War.
#OpNorthKorea began in March during the Korean Peninsula crisis when individuals claiming to represent Anonymous orchestrated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on many North Korean websites, which brought the sites down for days. Then, in April, the group announced that it had hacked into a North Korean propaganda website and stole 15,000 secret documents which it threatened to release unless the regime in Pyongyang stopped making nuclear weapons and threatening to use them, Kim Jong-Un resigned, a direct democracy was established inside North Korea and North Koreans were given free, uncensored access to the internet.
In announcing that attack, the group had promised another attack would occur on June 25.
Still another, smaller attack occurred last month but this one merely slowed access to sites on North Korea. Once again, however, the group announced on Twitter that a large attack would be occurring on June 25.
U.S. officials told the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday that domestic sites in North Korea had been taken down following Anonymous’s announcement about the stolen documents. Its websites catering to foreign audiences were left up, however.
It has not yet been confirmed whether Anonymous has stolen the documents. The group claimed that they had gotten into North Korea’s internal intranet, Kwangmyong, through a Chinese server. Although they released screenshots this week purporting to show they had stolen the documents, NK News points out the images are ones that have been floating around the internet since 2005.
The Daily Dot, however, says that a “statesman” has been quoted in a South Korean media outlet as saying the hackers have stolen documents that provide “information regarding missiles, their serial numbers, and North Korean high-ranking officials.”
This week’s press release was also posted by the group on YouTube. See below: