July 10, 2009 - 8:25am
The third wave of cyberattacks has hit South Korea disrupting and in some cases halting access to government, banking and media Web sites. Meanwhile, earlier suspicions that North Korea may have been behind the disruptions that have hit Web sites in South Korea and the United states in recent days were not confirmed by intelligence officials in Seoul.
The country`s largest computer security company, Ahnlabs had predicted the timing of Thursday's attacks, which began in the early evening. It said hackers had planted "malicious codes" in thousands of personal and business computers, which contained instructions to bombard seven Web sites in South Korea at 6 p.m. local time. However, when the attacks began, there were many more targets than predicted. About half a dozen government Web sites not on the company's list, including those of parliament, the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, slowed down or temporarily stopped working.
According to South Korea's main spy agency, the "level of the attacks was highly organized and meticulously planned," indicating the work of "certain organizations or state." However, the National Intelligence Service did not, however, single out North Korea by name as a suspect. Agency officials had told some members of the National Assembly yesterday that North Korea was the prime suspect, according to news reports in Seoul.
The attackers dropped the U.S. government and commercial Web sites from their hit list Tuesday afternoon, after those sites began working with large Internet service providers to filter and block the attack traffic said Alex Lanstein, senior security researcher at FireEye, a Milpitas, Calif.-based computer security firm.
Experts said the bug that caused the attacks, called MyDoom, is fairly unsophisticated. But they also noted that the bug was being frequently reprogrammed to target different sites.
The country`s largest computer security company, Ahnlabs had predicted the timing of Thursday's attacks, which began in the early evening. It said hackers had planted "malicious codes" in thousands of personal and business computers, which contained instructions to bombard seven Web sites in South Korea at 6 p.m. local time. However, when the attacks began, there were many more targets than predicted. About half a dozen government Web sites not on the company's list, including those of parliament, the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, slowed down or temporarily stopped working.
According to South Korea's main spy agency, the "level of the attacks was highly organized and meticulously planned," indicating the work of "certain organizations or state." However, the National Intelligence Service did not, however, single out North Korea by name as a suspect. Agency officials had told some members of the National Assembly yesterday that North Korea was the prime suspect, according to news reports in Seoul.
The attackers dropped the U.S. government and commercial Web sites from their hit list Tuesday afternoon, after those sites began working with large Internet service providers to filter and block the attack traffic said Alex Lanstein, senior security researcher at FireEye, a Milpitas, Calif.-based computer security firm.
Experts said the bug that caused the attacks, called MyDoom, is fairly unsophisticated. But they also noted that the bug was being frequently reprogrammed to target different sites.