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South Korean authorities issued a cyber security warning after
the websites of several major government agencies and financial
institutions were disabled by apparent hacker attacks.
The websites of the 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.
"The attacks consisted of massive harmful traffic to specific sites
causing access slowdown or disablement, and some national
institutions, banks and media sites have been targeted," it
said.
Some government websites and online shopping services remained down
on Wednesday and access to some US government sites from the
country appeared to have been disabled.
The commission is working to block the spread of malicious software
suspected of causing the attack and has advised users to keep
security patches and anti-virus programmes up to date.
Police and prosecutors have begun an investigation into the
incidents, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.
News of the attack caused shares of some online security firms to
jump on Wednesday morning, with Ahnlab Inc up by the market's 15%
daily limit and ESTsoft Corp climbing 5.31% against the junior
Kosdaq market 0.36% slide.
A similar attack on major websites in Estonia two years ago
prompted the NATO military alliance to review its response against
possible cyber-warfare.
