South Korea's top information agency National Intelligence Service was embroiled in controversy that it used hacking software to engage in illegal civilian surveillance.
Regarding the allegation, the main opposition party the New Politics Alliance for Democracy had a video conference on Thursday with Citizen Lab, a Canadian research team which first reported the NIS had bought the hacking program of Italy's Hacking Team.
Citizen Lab said during the video conference on the day, "The NIS asked us whether the hacking program of remote control system has wiretapping function for Kakao Talk - the nation's largest mobile messenger – and the agency wanted to add the function."
During the conference, Citizen Lab also said, "While we were looking at the emails involved, we found out that one employee from Hacking Team flew to Korea to meet the NIS."
It also added that, "The NIS also showed an interest in real-time wiretapping and asked about the wiretapping function of communications using telecom operators such as SKT."
Apart from the video conference, the main opposition party is expected to dig into the issue at the regular parliamentary inspection of the administration which kicks off in September.
Lee Jong-kul, a floor leader of the NPAD said, "If the probe is not properly done at the National Assembly, special investigation should be pursued at the national level.”
However, the ruling party Saenuri Party strongly is strongly opposing the NPAD’s continuing investigation.
Saenuri Party said as the hacking issue is prolonged, the activity of the NIS would be withering and its information capacity will be damaged, stressing that the investigation should be stopped.
Won yoo chul, floor leader of Saenuri Party said, "We should stop the self-injury of security from the inessential doubt."
The party’s top leader Lee In-jae also said, "The activity and capacity of the NIS should never be disclosed to an enemy," adding that, "During the process of overstating the doubt, the function of the NIS should never be weakened."
Industry watchers said the battle between the ruling party and the opposition party is expected to be prolonged.
Amid the growing dispute between the two parties, attention has been focused on log file as the main opposition party is demanding to disclose log file which includes the names and time of the people who log in the hacking program. Saenuri Party's lawmaker Lee Chul-woo said, "We cannot disclose log files deleted."
Log files are like a closed-circuit television of a building. When a person enters a house, the device records the all description of the person such as time of entrance, gender and color of their clothes. Log file, like CCTV, records all the information of log-in history left on computer.
When looking at log file, it is possible to see whether the NIS implanted the malicious code for investigation. Whether the activity succeeds or fails, all the history is recorded on the log file.
Industry watchers said the log file can also be manipulated or deleted. For instance, when there is log file named 1234, people can manipulate it as a file named 2345. Whether that was manipulated cannot be identified to the naked eye but experts can only identify them.
For the reason, the opposition party rejects the onsite investigation and the file should be analyzed with enough time with experts. Ahn Cheol-soo, the founder of AhnLab and lawmaker of the NPAD asked for at least a month with five experts to analyze the file.
