Minister of the Interior and Safety Yoon Ho-jung said about belatedly informing the public of the hacking of Onnara System, the civil service work system, that "we decided to announce it after devising countermeasures because the same type of hacking could come in."
Yoon the Minister responded this way at the Public Administration and Security Committee's comprehensive audit on Oct. 30 to a point raised by Yang Bu-nam of the Democratic Party of Korea, who said, "Regarding the background of announcing in October despite knowing of the hacking damage in July, I cannot erase the suspicion that you tried to hide it."
Earlier, Phrack Magazine, a U.S. hacking-related outlet, reported in August that there were signs that many of Korea's central government ministries, mobile carriers, and private corporations had been hacked. However, the government acknowledged this only in mid-October, about two months later, and disclosed the post-response process.
Regarding criticism that the government's computer systems were hacked for about three years from September 2022 to July 2025 without detecting the breach, Yoon the Minister said, "I was told that employees installed certificates on their home PCs to do their work, and as those PCs were hacked, the hacker came in as if legitimate and carried out the hacking, so it was not discovered."
He said, "We are establishing measures to allow access only when identity verification is certain through not only mobile (civil servant) ID but also composite authentication such as ARS and a multi-factor authentication system."