Employees at government-funded research institutes that study national cyber security were caught playing “StarCraft” on their work PCs during work hours after an internal report. Some employees were found to have reconnected using another internal network after access to the game server was blocked.
On the 12th, according to materials submitted by the National Security Research Institute (NSR) to Rep. Hwang Jeong-a of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the Science. ICT. Broadcasting. and Communications Committee, five employees of the Cybersecurity Training Center repeatedly accessed the “Battle.net” StarCraft server during work hours from September to December 2024.
They mainly took advantage when managers were away on vacation or business trips. The cumulative record for the employee with the longest connection time exceeded 90 hours. Some employees logged maximum daily connection times of 8 hours 53 minutes and 7 hours 21 minutes, respectively.
The Cybersecurity Training Center where they worked is located in a separate building away from the main campus in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon. The center used an external internet line for training, so unlike the general work network, access to game sites was not blocked, and employees was found to have taken advantage of this environment.
Attempts to keep playing continued even after access was blocked. In December of the same year, when the experimental internet line was blocked, traces were found that some employees had reconnected to Battle.net through the internal local network. The truth eventually came to light when an employee at the same center reported it to the ETRI whistleblowing system.
The employees caught said they logged on to the game to unwind after wrapping up a major event. They explained, however, that not all of the time connected to the server was actually spent playing.
NSR convened a disciplinary committee and issued reprimands to all five employees. Among them, the employee with the longest connection time, who was also caught for other misconduct such as improper use of parental leave, was initially deemed to warrant a pay cut, but the disciplinary level was reduced to a reprimand after taking into account a past commendation from the National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST) chair.
The institute deducted the employees’ paid annual leave by the amount of time they were connected to the game server. If remaining leave was insufficient, the corresponding time was deducted from their pay.
Measures to prevent a recurrence were also prepared. NSR said, “We integrated all training lines into a centralized management system and are monitoring all usage records while blocking access to nonwork sites such as games,” and added, “We conducted two rounds of security training for all employees and related training within the center, and required a regular inspection and report once on the operation results of external training networks.”
Rep. Hwang said, “It is a serious lapse in discipline that employees who must safeguard national cyber security repeatedly accessed a game server by taking advantage of managers’ absence,” and noted, “Lowering the penalty to a reprimand on the grounds of a past commendation, even after determining a pay cut was needed, is a slap on the wrist that does not meet the public’s expectations.”
