By It has been confirmed that North Korea was behind the recent cyber attacks:
The nation’s spy agency yesterday pinpointed North Korea as the mastermind of the latest cyber attack on key administrative websites both here and in the United States.
The National Intelligence Service, while briefing lawmakers, said the reclusive communist state seemed to have unleashed the “Distributed Denial of Service” virus.
Experts said despite its impoverishment, the North is likely to have attained a crude level of such hacking expertise.
“We have heard that North Korea has been training its people over the past several years, and was biding its time before experimenting on the rest of the world,” said professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies here. [Korea Herald]
This news comes as yet a second round of cyber attacks have hit various websites:
Sixteen high-profile Web sites, including those of the National Intelligence Service and antivirus software provider Ahnlab, have been hit by a second round of denial-of-service attacks.
An official at the Korea Information Security Agency said Thursday that a second round of cyber attacks began at six p.m. Wednesday on ten Web sites, including that of Ahnlab, and six Web sites that were subject to the first round of attacks earlier on Tuesday.
The official said that out of 26 Web sites that were crippled on Tuesday, six of them, including Web sites of the presidential office and the Chosun Ilbo daily, were disrupted for a second time starting late Wednesday.
The Defense Ministry reportedly was able to eliminate dangerous data traffic after installing equipment to counter denial-of-service attacks on Wednesday, but difficulties are still in place in getting access to the ministry’s Web site due to an error made in the process of setting up the equipment.
Meanwhile, the prosecution and police found three additional “zombie computers” on Wednesday and are currently analyzing a total of four such computers.
Zombie computers are computers that come under the control of hackers without the knowledge of their owners. Such “zombies” are activated to run software that automates routine, repetitive tasks. [KBS Global]
What I find most troubling about this is that if North Korea is able to pull off these attacks with such success, could you imagine what the Chinese could do?
1:51 am on July 9th, 2009 1
You know, this is kinda like taking Juche to a whole new level:
No longer content (or able) to just rest as the most isolated nation on the planet, the regime is reaching out to cripple the information highway of the world. By attacking cyber space, the effort is in part one of closing down the exchange of information globally – no matter how limited in time and the number of sites successfully shut down might be.
Juche became the means in part by which NK’s society was isolated and starved close to death. Now, it includes a desperate attempt to feed itself not by opening up, but by threatening to close up/isolate everybody else…
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2:12 am on July 9th, 2009 2
This is a cue for South Korean computer science majors bored out of their minds two weeks into summer vacation to respond with their own attacks on North Korean websites (all three of them).
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2:20 am on July 9th, 2009 3
A counter-attack into NK would be limited at best.
. Get those three computer science majors off their arse and down to the local PC-Bang..
1. NK doesn’t have the density of personally owner computers as ROK or US, so infecting a system to become a zombie system is pretty limited.
2. So if you don’t have a bunch of system “inside” there telecom enclave you be left with a direct attack on their main “pipe” which they control (ie block) incoming attacks.
3. Also what affect you that make on them…
Oh wait that you mean ole four-eyed mop top couldn’t pull down his goat porn
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2:53 am on July 9th, 2009 4
IT IS GO TIME! Time to fight fire with fire, someone hack the Jonger’s AOL Account. That will shut down the other NDC members and force them to use the faxes the rest of the nK military uses.
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3:36 am on July 9th, 2009 5
“Get those three computer science majors off their arse and down to the local PC-Bang..”
Clearly, I meant three North Korean websites, not three South Korean students.
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3:37 am on July 9th, 2009 6
Korea probably has a higher density of those zombie computers.
In the push of the past decade to make Korea an IT leader, the government and the Telcoms got together to make high speed internet accessible relatively cheaply nation wide. At the same time there was a surge in computer purchase and use. PC Bangs sprung up like weeds. Unfortunately, most owners and operators had little understanding or concern of computer security. Few had anti-virus software, or kept it updated if it was pre-installed. Few installed the security patch updates and even if they wanted to many couldn’t because their operating system was a pirated copy. Hence they were wide open to be hacked and hijacked.
It was evident even 10 years ago. So many computers from Korea became zombie SPAM distributors that you couldn’t reliably send email from a Korean ISP to the States. Many State-side ISPs would automatically flag email from a Korean ISP as SPAM.
Many of those computers are probably still hijacked or hijackable today.
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3:46 am on July 9th, 2009 7
DDoS attacks are pretty standard. They’re are plenty of applications out there that enable that sort of attack.
Now, remember, they attacked high profile websites, not necessarily high security ones.
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3:46 am on July 9th, 2009 8
“There are”
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5:43 am on July 9th, 2009 9
I’m sure this is interrupting the marathon Starcraft tournaments across the ROK.
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8:23 am on July 9th, 2009 10
I’ve read Chosun Ilbo’s site was being attacked tonight. Loading up the site was a bit slow (by Korean internet standards) but nothing too serious. They must have been ready for this round of attacks.
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8:45 pm on July 9th, 2009 11
“What I find most troubling about this is that if North Korea is able to pull off these attacks with such success, could you imagine what the Chinese could do?”
I have a feeling that the reason that these attacks were so successful is precisely because NK had Chinese help.
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