Infosecurity

US and Korean govts hit by cyber attacks

By Kelly Ng | 13 July 2009

Cyber attacks assumed to be launched from North Korea disrupted United States and South Korean government and key private sector websites last week.

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The attack, which started last Saturday (4 July), snowballed and severely impacted at least 26 government, financial and news web sites in both countries.

The affected US government web sites included those of the White House, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Trade Commission, and other state and federal departments. High profile commercial New York Stock Exchange and Yahoo Finance sites were also hit.

The attack also targeted government sites in South Korea, which included President Lee Myung-bak’s (pictured) official site.

The cyber attack used malware to control over 50,000 computers, from South Korea, Japan, China, US and possibly other countries. Linking these computers, it created a network or “botnets”, and sent as much as 20 to 40 gigabytes of data per second to these sites. This is 10 times the capacity normally handled by the site.

Some web sites, such as the White House’s, are familiar with such attacks – though of smaller scale – and were better prepared. However, others such as the Federal Trade Commission’s were disrupted for a period of up to a few days.