South Korea’s top HUMINT agency probes potentially catastrophic data breach
July 29, 2024 1 Comment
IN A HIGHLY UNUSUAL move, authorities in Seoul have publicly acknowledged a data leak that may have resulted in the outing of a number of South Korean undercover human intelligence (HUMINT) operatives abroad. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense said on Sunday it was investigating an alleged link of highly sensitive data belonging to the Korea Defense Intelligence Command (KDIC).
Formed under American tutelage in 1946, KDIC is today considered South Korea’s most secretive intelligence agency. It operates under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which makes it part of the Ministry of National Defense’s chain of command. Unlike DIA’s civilian counterpart, the National Intelligence Service, KDIC rarely surfaces in unclassified news reporting, and it almost never issues press releases. Its operations primarily involve HUMINT activities, thus making it South Korea’s most active HUMINT-focused agency.
Predictably, KDIC’s primary intelligence target is North Korea. The agency gathers much of its intelligence on the North through an extensive network of undercover officers operating with diplomatic credentials. KDIC also handles non-official cover (NOC) operatives, who are located mostly in Asia. There have been periodic claims in the unclassified literature that some KDIC NOCs have operated inside North Korea at times –though such claims remain speculative.
On Saturday, the Seoul-headquartered Yonhap News Agency alleged that classified information relating to KDIC had been “leaked”. According to Yonhap, the leak included personally identifiable information about KDIC official and non-official cover personnel stationed abroad. The report claimed that the leak was discovered by South Korean authorities a month ago, and that the discovery had resulted in the recall of several KDIC undercover operatives serving overseas “due to concerns over their identities being exposed”.
The Yonhap report claimed that, according to an ongoing probe, the leak may have originated from a personal laptop computer belonging to a civilian KDIC employee. The employee has since claimed that the laptop had been hacked, but some investigators believe the suspect may have “intentionally left the laptop vulnerable to hacking by North Koreans”.
According to an official statement released on Sunday by the Ministry of National Defense, the case is “currently under investigation by military authorities”.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 29 July 2024 | Permalink
THE UNITED STATES SECRET Service is among the world’s most prestigious law enforcement agencies. Its institutional experience in protecting US presidents and presidential candidates dates to 1901. Given its high-stakes protective mission —safeguarding the executive leadership of the world’s most powerful nation— the agency has historically placed emphasis on flawlessness: it simply can’t afford to fail.
THE 5TH SYMPOSIUM ON the Law of Intelligence Services (Symposium zum Recht der Nachrichtendienste) took place in Berlin, Germany, on March 21-22. In view of the 
SEVERAL CASES OF CHINESE espionage have been 
THE TARGETED KILLING OF Hassan Mahdawi, a high-ranking member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the commander of the Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, was carried out by Israel on April 1, 2024. The actual assassination was based on precise operational intelligence, while Israel’s assessment of Iran’s response was wrong.
ON GOOD FRIDAY, MARCH 29, Egisto Ott, a former member of Austria’s now-dissolved domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT), was arrested in his house in Carinthia, Austria’s southernmost state. Ott had frequently been at the center of media attention in the past year, in connection with the network surrounding the fugitive 
These included contacts in friendly foreign police services, whom Ott knew from his time as a liaison officer in Italy and Turkey. According to Gridling, these contacts were unaware that Ott had been removed from the BVT under suspicion of being unreliable and potentially even working for Russia. They therefore continued to help him when asked. Ott allegedly deceived his contacts by claiming that he needed information on cases relating to different kinds of extremism. As it turned out, according to the leaked arrest warrant, several of the individuals referred to by Ott as “suspects” in terrorism investigations were in fact Russian dissidents or intelligence defectors who were living as protected persons in Austria and elsewhere outside Russia.
ON MARCH 23, CHANNEL 12 of Israeli television aired a remarkable interview with Sassi Elya, the former director of technology at the Israel Security Agency (ISA). Better known by the acronyms Shin Bet or Shabak, the ISA is Israel’s domestic security service. The interview had initially been scheduled for broadcast as part of the evening news on October 7, 2023. However, its airing was canceled due to the attack on Israel by Hamas, which occurred that morning.
SINCE OCTOBER 7, 2024, when Israel was caught off guard by a sudden and highly damaging attack from Hamas, more information has surfaced regarding why there was no prior warning about the attack and the failures of Israeli intelligence in this regard.
capabilities. Another important insight is that the counterintelligence structures inside Hamas were successful in preventing Israeli intelligence from recruiting agents who were close enough to Sinwar to be able to alert Israel about the impending attack. Furthermore, Israel’s collection and analysis of signals intelligence was unproductive, possibly because Hamas was successful in countering Israel’s ability to produce effective intelligence from signals intercepts.
THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES have been “bolstering the[ir] architecture” aimed at stopping potential defectors and “liquidating” those who have already defected and are living in exile, according to a new report. In a 
A RETIRED SENIOR MOSSAD official has alleged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly ignored, and even frustrated, efforts to stop the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas. This inaction may have enabled the Palestinian militant group to plan, organize and execute Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which killed over 1400 Israelis on October 7, 2023, and sparked the current war between Israel and Hamas.
THE OCTOBER 7 ATTACK on Israel was a total surprise. There was no warning. There were very few signs of a possible attack. Israeli intelligence evaluated these signs as elements of a routine military exercise by Hamas, and even assessed them as parts of an imaginary scenario. It therefore gave no warning to those Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) units that were stationed on the border with Gaza. Meanwhile, what we know about the intelligence failure of October 7 will likely pale before what the commission of inquiry will reveal once it is established. That was precisely what happened in the case of the Agranat Commission of Inquiry, which made significant revelations while investigating the intelligence failings of the IDF in the run up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
time, in the first two days of the conflict the IDF was confused and acted without direction, in the apparent absence of relevant action plans for what to do in the event of a massive invasion. The IDF was clearly not ready for such a scenario.
for those conclusions to become public. What is to be done in the meantime? There is public pressure to launch the inquiry soon.
IT HAS BECOME CLEAR that Hamas had up-to-date intelligence on Israeli targets prior to the attack on October 7, 2023, the largest and most devastating terrorist attack in Israel’s history. Hamas did not have access to clandestine information sources but rather relied on open-source intelligence (OSINT) to understand the structure and weaknesses of Israel’s defense system along the border fence. In addition to publicly available maps, Hamas meticulously gathered online intelligence about specific sites within the Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.
interests of national security, the public’s ‘right to know’ purview is substantial. Thus, significant amounts of information are available online.
the Israeli Military Intelligence was dissolved, for reasons that remain to be investigated. CNN was among many news outlets that have 
SINCE OCTOBER 7, WHEN Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, many more details about the intelligence failure have emerged. It appears that Israeli intelligence officials have warned for years about military exercises held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which have included practice raids on cities deep inside Israel. However, the Israel Military Intelligence (IMI) did not heed to the warnings, because it considered Hamas operationally incapable of carrying out such raids. Instead, the IMI estimated that the Hamas leadership aimed to arrive at a settlement with Israel. That seems like the result of a highly successful disinformation operation, which added significantly to the effectiveness of the sudden attack on Israel on October 7.
large number of settlements simultaneously. It also believed that such an operation would go against the spirit of Hamas leadership’s spirit intention to settle with Israel.
Indeed, a preventive course of action should have been in place even in the absence of specific intelligence warnings —if only to enable the IDF to repel a surprise attack by Hamas. There was no need to estimate what Hamas would do in order to prepare for a surprise attack.
Israel releases findings of internal probe into October 7 intelligence disaster
August 12, 2024 17 Comments
To compline the report, the Intelligence Directorate of the IDF investigated how the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the State of Israel occurred, as well as how the MID analysts and other members of the intelligence community failed to notice the attack that Hamas had been planning.
According to the findings of the investigation, Hamas began planning its attack between seven and eight years ago, which means that Israeli intelligence should have been able to observe the relevant warnings as early as 2016. However, the IDF’s intelligence division missed the early signs.
It appears that the MID assumed Hamas had been deterred by Israel. There was also a prevailing assumption that the group’s military wing, led by Yahya Sinwar, had settled on improving the economic situation of Gaza Strip residents while securing its internal sovereign status in the Gaza Strip. The MID intelligence analysts were uniformly immersed in the concept that Hamas “did not want to and could not” go to war against Israel.
The main findings of the investigation are as follows: Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2023 Israel-Hamas War, Avner Barnea, Hamas, IDF, intelligence disasters, Israel, Israel Military Intelligence, News