By Judging by what is in this article OPLAN 5027 that was apparently stolen doesn’t seem very realistic in the first place:
South Korea‘s military is investigating a cyber attack in which North Korean hackers may have stolen secret defence plans outlining Seoul and Washington’s strategy in the event of war on the Korean peninsula.
The highly sensitive information, codenamed Oplan 5027, may have found its way into hostile hands last month after a South Korean officer used an unsecured USB memory stick to download it.
It reportedly contained a summary of military operations involving South Korean and US troops should North Korea conduct a pre-emptive strike or attempt to invade.
According to the Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, the document outlines troop deployments, a list of North Korean targets, amphibious landing scenarios and how to establish a post-war occupation.
The Yonhap news agency said the plan allowed for the deployment of 700,000 US troops in the event of a full-scale war.
Embarrassed officials in Seoul attempted to play down its importance. The document was not a full text of the plans, said the defence ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae, adding that the 11-page file was intended simply to brief military officials and did not contain sensitive information. [The Guardian]
So where would these 700,000 troops come from? The US has a hard enough time finding 30,000 to send to Afghanistan much less 700,000 to Korea. Plus this file looks like an executive summary so the North Koreans probably didn’t get a whole lot of information they don’t already have available to them.
Anyway a lot more on this from the Chosun Ilbo here.
For those that don’t know there is a reason why USB thumb drives are banned from DOD computers and it appears that the ROK officer that inserted this thumb drive didn’t follow protocol and makes me wonder how many other ROK officers have been continuing to use thumb drives in the computers?
2:16 am on December 18th, 2009 1
I thought J64 disabled USB drives on CENTRIXS quite some time ago.
I think the 700k figure includes all Air Force, Navy, Army, Reserves, and National Guard on the TPFDD.
Anyways, 5027 is only good for video game simulations. My money's on 5029.
12:01 pm on December 18th, 2009 2
I've seen so many ROK poor-handling-of-classified incidents, I can't even count. And yet they whine about much stuff we don't share with them….
12:13 pm on December 18th, 2009 3
They did disable this. The entire plan is much bigger than 11 pages, so whatever they got was pretty useless. If this is true, though, I want to know how he even got a USB into his computer. I hate the fact that we can't stick USBs into our computers at work (it makes transferring files more cumbersome), but I guess this is the asshole the rule was made to protect against. I'd want to see the Korean paper follow up this article with one that told what happened to the Soldier,but I'll bet that'll never happen…:)
2:10 pm on December 18th, 2009 4
The ROKs do have computers outside the combined network that aren't subject to disabling of USB drivers. Even so, I'm curious how the cyber forensics folks narrowed it down to a single file being obtained. I'm guessing that was the only classified document on the drive or on the computer. Ditto Matt on wanting to know what happens to this guy.
3:50 pm on December 18th, 2009 5
"So where would these 700,000 troops come from?"
They would be drafted.
4:35 pm on December 18th, 2009 6
Half the thumb drives I've ever owned have been stolen. I will never keep sensitive information on one.
10:16 pm on December 18th, 2009 7
USB is disabled on all US networks implemented with a multiple layer of defenses (GPO, registry settings, service settings, permissions and monitoring scripts, to name a few). ROKs have networks on the base, too. Most likely a ROK network incident.
6:05 pm on December 22nd, 2009 8
OPLAN's 5026 and 5027 are outdated and no longer viable / used. KR and UFG aren't based on them anymore. The NK's just got their hands on legacy information that is pretty common sense these days.
Ohh and the 700,000 soldiers referred to are not US but ROK soldiers. US Soldiers will not be entering into NK in case of a conflict restarting. The ROK's will have control of ground forces and will determine the strategy.