Concerns over cyber security are serious enough when talking about financial services, but they transform into outright fear when talking about the possibility of a military installation being breached by hackers. Those fears appear to be completely realistic, as new reports by some cybersecurity firms claim that hackers are looking to steal information from the U.S. and South Korean militaries.

The hackers are the same ones that have already done quite a bit of damage to the South Korean government, by taking tens of thousands of computers offline earlier this year. It appears that the initial attacks were just a way to see if they could gain access. Wiping out the hard drives was not the actual goal; rather, their goal was taking information off those computers. Those same hackers are apparently going after U.S. military computers now. The hackers have been working to gain this information for several years thanks to malicious code they have been sending through the net.

These attacks are quite a bit more serious than the ones that have been plaguing sites like LinkedIn. Cybersecurity firm McAfee (News - Alert) says that versions of malware have infected sites in an ongoing operation called Operation Troy. Back in 2009, the language was inserted in a South Korean social media site that was used by that country’s military.

"This goes deeper than anyone had understood to date, and it's not just attacks: It's military espionage." said Ryan Sherstobitoff, a senior threat researcher at McAfee who gave The Associated Press (News - Alert) a report that the company is releasing later this week. Sherstobitoff recently analyzed code samples shared by U.S. government partners and private users.

Sherstobitoff was the lead investigator after the March 20 cyber attacks on South Korea. The language that was used to wipe tens of thousands of computers is actually different than the language used in the malware that is geared towards extracting data. The investigator says that there are enough similarities in the language that he was able to deduce that the attackers are the same.