Tag: OPLAN 5015

Here is how the North Koreans were able to get access to OPLAN 5015:

A South Korea lawmaker recently disclosed that hackers suspected to be North Korean gained access to Seoul’s highly secured military intranet in September 2016 and made off with the US and South Korea’s secret war plans.

“It’s a ridiculous mistake,” the lawmaker, Rhee Cheol-hee, told The Wall Street Journal.

North Korean personnel reportedly attacked a South Korean cybersecurity firm and embedded themselves in the software. South Korea’s military used the software on its military computers, but the North Koreans still shouldn’t have been able to get in because Seoul keeps its internet, or outwardly connected network, separate from its intranet, or private network.

But it took only one computer plugged into both the internet and the intranet for the North Koreans to break in, The Journal reported.

“They should have removed the connector jack immediately after maintenance work,” Rhee said.

As a result, North Korea reportedly got ahold of Operation Plan 5015, the US and South Korea’s secret war plan to kill the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.  [Business Insider]

Maybe someone with IT experience can tell me why an unclassified networked computers needs to be plugged into a classified network for maintenance reasons?

This report makes it sound like the US and the ROK will just wake up one day and decide to launch a preemptive attack against North Korea.  The reality is that this “4D” concept would likely happen in response to a North Korean provocation to where there is clear intent to launch missiles against the ROK and the US:

The new operational concept jointly adopted by South Korea and the United States to destroy North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities is expected to prompt the North to launch fresh provocations, sources said Tuesday.

The allies approved the implementation guidance on the “4D Operational Concept” during the annual Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) held in Seoul, Monday, as a means to carry out preemptive strikes against the North’s missile threats, containing nuclear, chemical and biological warheads.

The guidance, which is designed to detect, disrupt, destroy and defend — the 4 “D’s” — has the major implication that the allies have revived the concept of preemptive strikes against the North’s strategic facilities. A ministry official noted on condition of anonymity that “disrupt and destroy” contains the connotation of preemptive strikes.

In an apparent response to the allies’ endorsement of the new operational concept, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un observed a live-fire exercise for anti-aircraft artillery.

Kim was quoted as saying by the KCNA: “We should actively push for the development of a variety of advanced anti-aircraft guns that meet the requirements of modern warfare.”

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, told reporters, “The report came right after South Korea and the U.S. approved the 4D Operational Concept. It seems the North had the intention to respond to the allies’ cooperation.”

Officials said Seoul and Washington have prepared the guidance since 2013 while having experienced various provocations from Pyongyang including a third nuclear test in February that year and the test-firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile in May this year.

The preparation comes at a time when the six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the North remain stalled since late 2008, due to the insistence by the North that it should join the talks with the status of a nuclear power and without any conditions attached.

The guidance will reportedly be reflected in a new joint wartime operational plan between the allies, dubbed Operation Plan (OPLAN) 5015, focused on preemptive strikes on strategic sites in the North. The allies signed OPLAN 5015 in June to replace the existing OPLAN 5027, which was more about how to defend the South. [Korea Times]

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