Court Administration Office on 'North Korea Hacking Suspicion': "Report to Personal Information Protection Commission, Additional Investigation with National Intelligence Service"

Regarding the suspicion that the North Korean hacking group Lazarus hacked the judiciary's computer network, the Supreme Court's Court Administration Office will conduct an additional investigation together with related agencies.

Supreme Court

The Court Administration Office stated on the 8th, "There are limits to resolving the fundamental suspicions through our own response, so on the 7th, we reported the related facts to the Personal Information Protection Commission, and we are currently preparing additional investigation plans together with security specialized agencies such as the National Intelligence Service."

In February, the Court Administration Office detected and deleted malware from the judiciary's computer network. Afterward, an analysis requested from a security specialist company identified the malware as similar to the techniques mainly used by Lazarus. Subsequently, security enhancement measures for the computer network were implemented, and efforts were made to determine the scale of data leaked externally. However, because the infected targets were virtualized PCs connected to the external network, it was difficult to accurately specify the damage. It has not yet been confirmed whether sensitive litigation documents were leaked.

There have been suspicions that Lazarus stole hundreds of gigabytes of data within the judiciary's computer network. However, on the 30th of last month, the Court Administration Office dismissed this, stating, "It cannot be definitively concluded that Lazarus is responsible." They also added, "We will do our best to transparently and thoroughly investigate with security specialized agencies to accurately identify the cause, route, and whether there was any damage, and then establish fundamental measures to prevent recurrence."