Korean cyberattacks continue

Jake Widman
Friday, 10 July 2009 03:50

Business IT - Security

According to a South Korean government official, cyberattackers have renewed their assault on seven websites in that country, including one that belongs to the government.

The new wave of attacks follows last weekend's assault on government and business websites in the U.S. and South Korea.

In the U.S., the sites of the departments of Homeland Security and Defense were among those targeted.

The assaults came in the form of "distributed denial of service" attacks launched by tens of thousands of PCs infected with the MyDoom virus. Such attacks direct the infected PCs to send so many connection requests to the targeted websites that they become overloaded and inaccessible.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service announced that the attacks seemed to be coordinated "at the level of a certain organization or state." South Korean news agencies have suggested that the North Korea was the culprit, although there is no firm evidence of the source.

It took several days to find and block the attacking machines. Yesterday, South Korean computer security vendor AhnLab predicted that the attacks would resume.

No new U.S. breaches have been reported, but a member of South Korea's Korea Communications Commission has said that seven sites in that country -- six private and one governmental -- are under renewed attack.