North Korea Test-fires 2 More Missiles as US Sends Carrier

A nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier and its battle group began exercises with South Korean warships on Monday, hours after North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles in an apparent protest of the allies’ expanding drills.

The seventh missile test this month underscored heightening tensions in the region as both the North’s weapons tests and the US-South Korea joint military exercises have intensified in a cycle of tit-for-tat, The Associated Press said.

The launches may have been timed for the arrival of the USS Nimitz and its strike group, including a guided missile cruiser and two destroyers, which escorted the carrier and engaged in air defense exercises with South Korean warships in waters near Jeju island.

Jang Do Young, a South Korean navy spokesperson, said the drills were aimed at sharpening joint operational capabilities and demonstrating the US commitment to defend its ally with the full range of options, including nuclear, in face of the North’s “escalating nuclear and missile threats.” The Nimitz strike group was expected to arrive in the South Korean mainland port of Busan on Tuesday.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the two North Korean missiles were fired from a western inland area south of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang from around 7:47 a.m. to 8 a.m. and traveled around 370 kilometers (229 miles) before landing at sea. Japan’s military said the missiles flew on an irregular trajectory and reached a maximum altitude of 50 kilometers (31 miles) before landing outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Japan has previously used the term to describe a North Korean solid-fuel missile apparently modeled after Russia’s Iskander mobile ballistic system, which is designed to be maneuverable in low-altitude flight to better evade South Korean missile defenses. North Korea also has another short-range system with similar characteristics that resembles the US MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said North Korea may dial up its testing activity further with more missile launches or even conducting its first nuclear test since September 2017.

The South Korean and Japanese militaries denounced the latest launches as serious provocations threatening regional peace and violating UN Security Council resolutions and said they were working with the United States to analyze the missiles further.

The United States and South Korea completed their biggest springtime exercises in years last week, which had included both computer simulations and life-fire field exercises. But the allies have continued their field training in a show of force against North Korea’s expanding nuclear arsenal and belligerent threats of nuclear conflict.

North Korea had also fired a short-range missile when the USS Ronald Reagan and its battle group arrived for joint drills with South Korea in September, which was the last time the United States sent an aircraft carrier to waters near the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea has launched more than 20 ballistic and cruise missiles on 11 occasions this year as it tries to force the United States to accept its nuclear status and negotiate a removal of sanctions from a position of strength.

They weapons tested this month included an intercontinental ballistic missile and a series of short-range missiles intended to overwhelm South Korean defenses as North Korea tries to demonstrate an ability to conduct nuclear strikes on both South Korea and the US mainland.
The North last week carried out what it described as a three-day exercise that simulated nuclear attacks on South Korean targets.

The country's leader Kim Jong Un has condemned the US-South Korean joint military drills as invasion rehearsals. The allies say the exercises are defensive in nature.

The tests also included a purported nuclear-capable underwater drone that the North claimed can set off a huge “radioactive tsunami” and destroy naval vessels and ports. Analysts were skeptical about such claims or whether the device presents a major new threat, but the tests underlined the North’s commitment to expand its arsenal.

North Korea, following some of its ballistic and cruise missile tests this month, also claimed that those weapons were tipped with mock nuclear warheads that detonated 600 to 800 meters (1,960 to 2,600 feet) above their sea targets. communicating them as heights that would maximize damage.

North Korea already is coming off a record year in weapons testing, launching more than 70 missiles in 2022. It had set into law an escalatory nuclear doctrine that authorizes pre-emptive nuclear strikes in a broad range of scenarios where it may perceive its leadership as under threat.
“It appears North Korea might be practicing, or signaling that it’s practicing, the use of nuclear strikes, both preemptive and retaliatory, in a range of scenarios that are authorized in its nuclear doctrine,” said Duyeon Kim, a senior analyst at the Center for a New American Security.

“The problem is that continued testing helps Pyongyang perfect its technology, strengthen its nuclear weapons capability that threatens South Korea and Japan, increase the likelihood of miscalculation that could lead to inadvertent conflict, and accumulate political leverage ahead of future diplomatic talks with Washington.”

Following the North’s announcement of the drone test on Friday, South Korea’s air force released details of a five-day joint drill with the United States last week that included live-fire demonstrations of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons.

The air force said the exercise was aimed at verifying precision strike capabilities and reaffirming the credibility of Seoul’s “three-axis” strategy against North Korean nuclear threats — preemptively striking sources of attacks, intercepting incoming missiles and neutralizing the North’s leadership and key military facilities.

After Israeli and American forces struck Iranian nuclear targets, officials in both countries sounded the alarm over potentially disruptive cyberattacks carried out by the Iranian hackers.

But as a fragile ceasefire holds, cyber defenders in the United States and Israel say they have so far seen little out of the ordinary – a potential sign that the threat from Iran’s cyber capabilities, like its battered military, has been overestimated.

There has been no indication of the disruptive cyberattacks often invoked during discussions of Iran’s digital capabilities, such as its alleged sabotage and subsequent break-ins at US casinos or water facilities.

"The volume of attacks appears to be relatively low," said Nicole Fishbein, a senior security researcher with the Israeli company Intezer. "The techniques used are not particularly sophisticated."

Online vigilante groups alleged by security analysts to be acting at Iran’s direction boasted of hacking a series of Israeli and Western companies in the wake of the airstrikes.

A group calling itself Handala Hack claimed a string of data heists and intrusions, but Reuters was not able to corroborate its most recent hacking claims. Researchers say the group, which emerged in the wake of Palestinian group Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, likely operates out of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence.

Rafe Pilling, lead threat intelligence researcher at British cybersecurity company Sophos, said the impact from the hacking activity appeared to be modest.

“As far as we can tell, it's the usual mix of ineffectual chaos from the genuine hacktivist groups and targeted attacks from the Iran-linked personas that are likely having some success but also overstating their impact,” he said.

Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to a request for comment. Iran typically denies carrying out hacking campaigns.

Israeli firm Check Point Software said a hacking campaign it ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has in recent days sent phishing messages to Israeli journalists, academic officials and others.

In one case, the hackers tried to lure a target to a physical meeting in Tel Aviv, according to Sergey Shykevich, Check Point’s threat intelligence group manager. He added that the reasoning behind the proposed meeting was not clear.

Shykevich said there have been some data destruction attempts at Israeli targets, which he declined to identify, as well as a dramatic increase in attempts to exploit a vulnerability in Chinese-made security cameras – likely to assess bomb damage in Israel.

The pro-Iranian cyber operations demonstrate an asymmetry with pro-Israeli cyber operations tied to the aerial war that began on June 13.

In the days since the start of the conflict, suspected Israeli hackers have claimed to have destroyed data at one of Iran’s major state-owned banks. They also burned roughly $90 million in cryptocurrencies that the hackers allege were tied to government security services.

Israel's National Cyber Directorate did not return a message seeking comment.

Analysts said the situation is fluid and that more sophisticated cyber espionage activity may be flying under the radar.

Both Israeli and US officials have urged industry to be on the lookout. A June 22 Department of Homeland Security bulletin warned that the ongoing conflict was causing a heightened threat environment in the US and that cyber actors affiliated with the Iranian government may conduct attacks against US networks.

The FBI declined to comment on any potential Iranian cyber activities in the United States.

Yelisey Bohuslavskiy, the cofounder of intelligence company Red Sense, compared Iran’s cyber operations to its missile program. The Iranian weapons that rained down on Israel during the conflict killed 28 people and destroyed thousands of homes, but most were intercepted and none significantly damaged the Israeli military.

Bohuslavskiy said Iranian hacking operations seemed to work similarly.

“There is a lot of hot air, there is a lot of indiscriminate civilian targeting, and - realistically - there are not that many results,” he said.

North Korea Test-fires 2 More Missiles as US Sends Carrier