South Korea’s state-run arms development institute was found Monday to have lost a fax encryption system in Russia, stoking concerns over a potential compromise of sensitive information that may pose a threat to the country’s national security.
The Agency for Defense Development acknowledged that the device disappeared from its office in Moscow last October. The equipment, last used in June 2014, is attached to a fax machine and designed to encode plain text and decipher encrypted messages.
(Yonhap)
The Defense Ministry immediately instructed the institute last February to cease the use of the gear across the board, collecting them and changing their passcodes, officials said, adding that there have not been any breaches of crucial data.
The Daejeon-based think tank runs its office in three countries and the Moscow unit opened in 2011.
“The military has retrieved all units of the same model that had been used overseas and taken steps to alter the cryptographic program and encryption keys,” ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said at a news briefing.
“As of now, no encoding gadgets are operating abroad other than those installed at the military attache’s offices, and we plan to reinforce security checks so as to prevent a recurrence of such an incident.”
Wary of a possible intelligence breach, the National Intelligence Office, Defense Security Command and Defense Intelligence Agency have launched a probe into the device’s vanishing. The ADD also levied a one-month salary cut on a security manager as a penalty for his lax oversight. Officials said the security manager frequently goes on business trips.
But concerns persist as the whereabouts of the machine and mastermind and background of the incident remain in the dark, and no related investigation has been carried out on the spot.
“The machine was mobilized only three times over the last three years ― all in 2014 ― and there is absolutely no possibility for a leak because once you open it, a sensor prompts the decryption key to be deleted,” another ministry official said on customary condition of anonymity.
“Given the sensitivity of the issue, we had to be cautious not to cause any diplomatic problems.”
By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)
