By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter

With South and North Korea seeking ways to ease tensions along the heavily militarized border guarded by 1.7 million troops from both sides, the two Koreas are bracing themselves for the warfare of the future, often characterized as the `cyber war’.

In the midst of a paradigm shift in the future of warfare, largely determined by capabilities to break down information systems of the enemies, the North was found operating a high-quality military unit to hack into the South’s computer networks and secret information.

Lt. Gen. Song Young-geun, chief of the Defense Security Command (DSC), said on Thursday that the crack contingent of hackers had been set up under orders from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

``The unit is under operation with a view to stealing a wide range of information from our government agencies and research bodies,’’ he said in his opening address to the Defense Information Security Conference 2004, hosted by the DSC.

It is the first time for the defense agency to officially confirm the existence of such a hacking unit in the North, though an opposition lawmaker had made a similar allegation last year.

According to the DSC, the North selects graduates from a top military university and gives them intensive training of computer-related skills to later appoint them as commissioned officers of the hacking unit.

``The hacking capability of the unit is assessed as equivalent to that of the CIA of the United States,’’ Song explained.

The drastic development in science and technologies, spurred mainly by the advances in IT technologies, have brought about a paradigm change in warfare; the mass killing and destruction in the wars of the industrial age are giving ways to precision targeting and paralysis of intelligence systems in the new era.

The more a nation’s defense relies on information technologies, however, the more vulnerable its security will be, said Chung Koo-don, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis (KIDA).

``We understand the North’s hacking skills stand at a high level, having little difficulty in paralyzing Internet networks by spreading virulent computer viruses or penetrating the online systems,’’ Chung told The Korea Times.

In regard to the defense area, he added, it would be not easy for them to get into the military network since the nation’s armed forces use an intranet, which is not connected to the worldwide web.

``But what we should know is the vulnerability of the online computer network. It can collapse at any given moment if a single figure operating the system is infiltrated into the enemy’s side by spies,’’ the expert stressed.

Earlier this month, a rank-and-file soldier was investigated by the military security agency after leaking confidential information by accident through an Internet file-sharing service. The soldier let slip second-grade secret information in March while using peer-to-peer (P2P) software offered by a private Internet portal service provider.

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr