S. Korean government stays mum as Foreign Ministry and SNU are hacked

Posted on : 2015-11-09 17:34 KST Modified on : 2015-11-09 17:34 KST
Response to hacking contrasts sharply with New Zealand, where allegations sparked a spirited debate
The NSA’s Xkeyscore hacking program
The NSA’s Xkeyscore hacking program

Months after the fact, it was brought to light that a South Korean diplomat and university professor’s email accounts with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and Seoul National University were spied on in 2013 by a New Zealand intelligence agency using surveillance software developed and administered by the US government’s National Security Agency (NSA). The surveillance of this diplomat’s emails was reported by the New Zealand media this past March, but the South Korean government has yet to make any kind of response.

In March 2015, the New Zealand Herald and called The Intercept, the investigative news website, reported that a New Zealand intelligence agency called the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) had used the XKEYSCORE surveillance program, which was developed by the NSA, to spy on the email accounts of eight candidates for director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) during the campaign, which lasted from the end of January until the end of April 2013, on behalf of the New Zealand candidate. One of the candidates whose email was read was Bark Tae-ho, 63, a professor at Seoul National University’s graduate school of international studies and the director of commerce and negotiations for South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT), as the ministry was known at the time.

XKEYSCORE is a program that the NSA uses to carry out indiscriminate internet surveillance on people around the world. Members of the “five eyes” (FVEY) alliance of intelligence agencies from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all have access to the program and its data.

“When I was a candidate in 2013, I only used email accounts with the Foreign Ministry and Seoul National University, since there was nothing that I needed to keep confidential. I wasn’t tracking the movement of the other candidates or anything like that,” Bark told the Hankyoreh in a telephone interview at the beginning of this month.

When asked about the fact that his emails were the target of online surveillance, Bark said that a reporter from New Zealand had called him this past spring about it.

“I was annoyed, but it’s not a big deal. I don’t think that it had much of an impact on the outcome of the election,” he added.

Bark said that he was not using a smartphone at the time. After studying economics at Seoul National University, Bark worked at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP) before becoming a professor at Seoul National University. He became the director of commerce and negotiations at MOFAT in 2011 and stepped down in 2014.

While at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs complex, Bark used a desktop computer to write emails, which were sent to South Korean embassies around the world. His SNU email was reportedly used to write emails to his students in Africa and the Middle East requesting their assistance. According to Bark, he remained in South Korea throughout the director-general election campaign, with the exception of one visit to Geneva in January 2014 for a political presentation.

The WTO director-general is elected by representatives from the organization’s 161 member countries. Bark passed the first round of voting in April 2014, but was eliminated in a second round later that month. Ultimately, the position of director-general went not to New Zealand candidate Tim Groser, but to Roberto Azevedo of Brazil.

The WTO director-general candidate monitoring case has drawn attention for two reasons. First, it confirmed what had previously only been speculation about XKeyscore’s indiscriminate online monitoring capabilities. In 2013, then-US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents through The Guardian on the NSA’s online monitoring. It marked the first public awareness of XKeyscore, a data collection, aggregation, and search program and a key component of the NSA’s intelligence capabilities.

Snowden’s documents showed the NSA indiscriminately collecting online information via deep-sea internet optical cables and internet site servers around the world. NSA staffers using XKeyscore, he explained, could use a target’s email address to collect not only email exchanges, but also records of the target’s online activities such as web page usage logs. The news came with shocking revelations that networks at government agencies and national universities could have been targets for monitoring.

Among Snowden’s documents was one suggesting that XKeyscore could be used to search a “list of all [virtual private network] venture businesses in country X.” The document is believed to have been a presentation file for employee education. Another file had a sample problem reading, “My target speaks German but is in Pakistan -- how can I find him?” The answer states that only Xkeyscore could be used, as it was capable of extracting and storing online communication information in all languages.

A number of examples of Xkeyscore searches were included in a document titled “2013_wto_project” released by the New Zealand Herald. The document showed New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau using XKeyscore to conduct keyword searches for terms such as “WTO” and “candidate” on emails around the world. It also showed a search process combining those words with the names of eight other candidates besides New Zealand’s. Among the search terms were Bark’s surname, as well as “Kyerematen,” “Mohamed,” “Gonzalez,” “Blanco,” “Azevedo,” “Pangestu,” and “Hindawi.” The document did not state specifically what kind of emails New Zealand’s intelligence agency was able to access.

Second, none of the monitoring targets, including Bark, had any connection to any criminal or terrorist activities. It’s a case where the “five eyes” appear to have established a form of “intelligence imperialism.” While their information sharing activities had come to light in the Snowden document, the new document showed an even more concrete activity.

The post-revelation reactions in South Korea and New Zealand have been very different. After local media reports early this year, the case became a political cause celebre in New Zealand. The New Zealand government also had the unsettling experience of seeing articles about the illegal monitoring go to press the same day it signed a free trade agreement with South Korea on Mar. 23. The ruling and opposition parties in the New Zealand Parliament debated the legality of the monitoring and the negative impact on relations with other Pacific Rim countries.

Records from an Apr. 1 session of the House of Representation show Green Party lawmaker Kennedy Graham criticizing the actions.

“In addition to spying on Pacific friends, the GCSB has extended its services on behalf of individual Ministers -- on the Hon. Tim Groser’s rivals for the World Trade Organization job. This included candidates from South Korea, Indonesia, and Brazil. That too is on the edge of the law or beyond it, as well as being offensive to those governments,” Graham said.

As of now, Seoul has yet to make any official response. In his remarks, Graham also told lawmakers the New Zealand Prime Minister had met twice with South Korean President Park Geun-hye earlier that year for the FTA, but that the “matter has not been raised.”

Another record of a Parliament meeting on Apr. 2 showed opposition lawmakers grilling the administration over the episode. Groser, who was attending as Minister of Trade, said the government had “had discussions with the Brazilian Government at ambassadorial level [on the email monitoring].”

“We are ready to clarify our operations with any friendly government that seeks our attention, and that offer remains open. It was not taken up by the Korean government,” he continued.

In a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh, Bark said he had “never been contacted by the government” on the matter.

New Zealand parliamentary records also showed Prime Minister John Key saying the lack of a response to the monitoring meant South Korea “wouldn’t give a monkey’s” about allegations that the country had illegally monitored their candidate for WTO director-general.

In an Oct. 12 telephone interview, the Hankyoreh asked former NSA official Thomas Drake, 58, whether he thought XKeyscore could be used to allow monitoring of any desired emails.

“I don’t know if that kind of thing happened with the Korean candidate, but obviously it’s possible to intercept emails,” he replied.

“The technology has emerged for that [the NSA] to access conversations, information, and database,” Drake added.

“That also goes for accessing routers and optical cables. [The NSA] can access those channels and easily snag or steal intelligence, including content,” he continued.

Drake worked at the NSA from 1989 to 2008.

The office of Cheryl Gwyn, New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS), declined to respond to the Hankyoreh’s question on what emails of Bark’s the GSCB had intercepted.

“The Inspector-General Cheryl Gwyn has yet to complete her inquiry and it is not appropriate for her to comment at this stage,” Matt Torbit, a Senior Advisor on the Media, Communications & External Relations team wrote in an email reply.

Torbit added that Gwyn, “will make as much information public as possible when she releases her inquiry report at the conclusion of her investigation.”

“We hope to have findings by the end of this year, and we will release them once we do,” she added.

The Foreign Ministry was also asked about the government handling of the case, but said only that it knew “nothing about it.”

SNU said it had “no comment” when asked by the Hankyoreh about the condition of its email network, the possibility of hacking, and any notifications from New Zealand.

By Ko Na-mu and Kwon Oh-sung, staff reporters

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

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