TMCnet News
HACKERS ATTACK SOUTH KOREAN GOVT, PRIVATE WEB SITESSEOUL, Jul 08, 2009 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- A series of cyber attacks disrupted the Web sites of South Korea's presidential office, government agencies and private firms, but no serious damage was reported, officials said Wednesday. The so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against 11 domestic Internet sites started at around 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, shutting them down for hours, said the government-run Korea Information Security Agency (KISA). Hackers disrupted the Web sites of the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, the National Assembly and the Ministry of Defense, it said. Among private sites infiltrated were major lenders Shinhan Bank and Korea Exchange Bank. The cyber attacks also affected the country's No. 1 portal Naver's e-mail service and online auctioneer eBay's South Korean site Auction.com, the agency said. A DDoS attack involves sending large amounts of data that renders Web servers unusable by obstructing communication between the intended server and the target. The attacks generally use multiple personal computers infected by a hacker, allowing the individual to drive more traffic to the target. KISA officials said most sites returned to normal as of 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, though some sites remained unable to get access. If traffic to the affected sites increases, however, they could malfunction again as the attacks are still ongoing, the agency said. No major damage has been reported so far and police said they have begun an investigation into who might have been behind the attacks. Meanwhile, the telecom regulator Korea Communications Commission (KCC) issued a warning against the DDoS attack early Wednesday. The KCC said that it is harder to track down and halt DDoS attacks as they involve multiple machines at the same time. "The most urgent issue is to remove the virus from each individual personal computer exposed to hacker attacks," said an official at the KCC. "We have requested that internet service providers distribute a vaccine program to those users whose computers are infected." South Korea is one of the most wired nations in the world, with over two-thirds of its people having high-speed Internet access. (Yonhap)maz |