South Korea Says Slim Chance Hacker Stole Nuclear Secrets

The South Korean atomic energy institute said Friday that there is a slim possibility a teen-age British computer hacker stole secret nuclear data from its computer system.

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, or KAERI, said it was investigating possible damage to its system after a report in the Washington Times newspaper Thursday that said the hacker managed to access it recently.

The Times report quoted James Christy, director of computer crime investigation at the U.S. Air Force’s office of special investigations. He spoke at a conference on global organized crime convened by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Christy said the 16-year-old youth using the name Data Stream got into the system and more than 100 others after penetrating the computer at the Rome Air Development Center at Griffith Air Force Base in Rome, N.Y.

The report said British police found the boy, who was not identified, sitting in front of his computer screen when they raided his house, and he curled up into a fetal position and cried when he realized they had come to arrest him.

South Korean media quoted KAERI officials as saying there is a good chance a hacker could have infiltrated its system because it was connected to the worldwide Internet.

However, the officials said confidential information such as that on reactor systems and fuel rod design was stored separately from other data and protected by multiple passwords.