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Police officers from National Police Agency show a seized computer which was used for hacking at the agency's headquarters in Seoul - Source: Reuters -
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More than two dozen internet sites in South Korea and the United
States, including the White House, were attacked in recent days by
hackers that South Korea's spy agency said may be linked to North
Korea.
US government websites that had been targeted were up and running
and day-to-day operations at the White House and Pentagon had not
been affected, officials said.
US officials also said it was premature to say who was responsible
and that these types of internet attacks happen every day on
government networks.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) said in a
statement that an organization and possibly a state were behind the
attacks in South Korea, the world's most wired nation, and there
were signs of meticulous preparations for the act.
South Korean media, including Yonhap news agency, quoted parliament
members as saying after a briefing with intelligence service
officials that the spy agency believed North Korea or pro-North
elements were behind the attacks.
Malicious programs were found targeting 26 US and South Korean
websites, NIS officials said, according to Yonhap.
The attackers tried to jam the websites by overwhelming their
data capacity and knocking them out of service, it said.
In the United States, the NASDAQ stock market said its website and
business was unaffected by the cyber attack and the White House
said all federal websites were up and running.
The attack on websites had absolutely no effect on day-to-day
operations at the White House, spokesman Nick Shapiro said.
"The preventative measures in place to deal with frequent attempts
to disrupt WhiteHouse.gov's service performed as planned, keeping
the site stable and available to the general public, although
visitors from regions in Asia may have been affected," he
said.
Other public websites affected included the State, Treasury and
Transportation departments, the Secret Service and the Federal
Trade Commission, officials said.
The State Department said the attack against its state.gov website
started on July 5.
"It's still ongoing, but I'm told that it's much reduced right
now," spokesman Ian Kelly said.
Speculation about North Korea
If North Korea was responsible, it would mark an escalation in
tensions already high due to the reclusive communist state's
nuclear test in May; it's firing of seven ballistic missiles in
July and repeated attacks on long-time foes Seoul and Washington in
its official media.
Access to the internet is denied to almost everyone in the
impoverished North, but intelligence sources in Seoul have said the
secretive state has stepped up a unit that specializes in cyber
attacks.
Tim Stevens, a technology expert at King's College in London, said
if North Korea was a source of the attack it was largely symbolic
because most of the targets were not critical national
infrastructure and the stock exchange was closed at the time of the
attacks.
This type of denial of service attack was designed to disrupt
rather than penetrate a system to obtain data, he said.
The websites of the South Korea's presidential office, defence
ministry, and the National Assembly were saturated with access
requests generated by malicious software on Tuesday, crippling
server response to legitimate traffic, South Korea's Communications
Commission said in a statement.
News of the attack pushed shares of some online security firms
higher on Wednesday, with Ahnlab Inc up by the 15% daily limit on
the junior Kosdaq market, which ended trading down.
A similar attack on major websites in Estonia two years ago
prompted the NATO military alliance to review its response against
possible cyber-warfare.
