SEOUL, Dec. 28 (Korea Bizwire) – North Korea again denied its involvement in the hacking of South Korea’s nuclear power station operator Sunday, calling the allegation “a trumped-up plot against the communist country.”
The state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) has suffered a series of cyber attacks that has raised safety concerns in a country that relies on 23 nuclear reactors for one-third of its energy needs. Over the past week, an anonymous anti-nuclear group posted a series of documents and operating manuals for a number of South Korean nuclear reactors on the Internet.
South Korean officials have not ruled out the possible involvement of North Korea, which has a track record of waging cyber attacks on major financial institutions, government websites and media organizations in the South.
“South Korea is blindly trying to link the recent hacking of its nuclear power stations to us,” said the Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. “It is a totally groundless fabrication.”
South Korea should first come up with evidence if it wants to blame the incident on North Korea, the newspaper said.
On Saturday, the Minju Joson, the North Korean cabinet’s official newspaper, also denied the North’s involvement in the hacking incident, saying it is the same scheme as the one to link the 2010 sinking of the South Korean naval corvette Cheonan to the North.
South Korea has concluded North Korea torpedoed the 1,200-ton South Korean warship near the tensely guarded West Sea border, killing 46 South Korean sailors. Pyongyang has denied the attack.
A joint investigation team of South Korean government and prosecution officials has been looking into the hacking of the KHNP to determine who is behind the incident. On Wednesday, the team said a suspect in the hacking attack was found to have used multiple Internet protocol addresses based in China.
(Yonhap)
