Sound The Trumpet : North Korea blamed for â€˜massiveâ€™ cyber attacks

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“North Korea blamed for â€˜massiveâ€™ cyber attacks”
by msnbc
July 8th, 2009

Officials eye link after assault took down U.S., S. Korean government sites

SEOUL, South Korea - South Korean intelligence officials believe North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces committed cyber attacks that paralyzed major South Korean and U.S. government Web sites, aides to two lawmakers said Wednesday.

The sites of 11 South Korean organizations, including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, according to the state-run Korea Information Security Agency. Agency spokeswoman Ahn Jeong-eun said 11 U.S. sites suffered similar problems. She said the agency is investigating the case with police and prosecutors.

In the United States, the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the July 4 holiday weekend and into this week, according to American officials inside and outside the government.

Denial of service attack
Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

"It certainly seems to be a well-organized attack," an anonymous government official told The Washington Post. "There are a lot of computers involved. What we don't know is who is orchestrating it."

The Korea Information Security Agency also attributed the attacks to denial of service.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, said he doubts whether the impoverished North has the capability to knock down the Web sites.

But Hong Hyun-ik, an analyst at the Sejong Institute think tank, said the attack could have been done by either North Korea or China, saying he "heard North Korea has been working hard to hack into" South Korean networks.

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