Friday, 22 March 2013
A hacking attack on the servers of South Korean broadcasters and banks originated from an IP address based in China, officials in Seoul said, raising suspicions the intrusion came from North Korea. An unnamed official from South Korea's presidential office was quoted by the Yonhap news agency as saying the discovery of the IP address indicated Pyongyang was responsible for the attack.
The attack brought down the network servers of television broadcasters YTN, MBC and KBS as well as two major commercial banks, Shinhan Bank and NongHyup Bank. South Korea raised its alert levels in response.
"We've identified that a Chinese IP is connected to the organizations affected," a spokesman for South Korea's Communications Commission told a press conference. It took the banks hours to restore operations. Damage to the servers of the TV networks was believed to be more severe, although broadcasts were not affected.
About 32,000 computers at the six organizations were affected, according to the South's state-run Korea Internet Security Agency, adding it would take up to five days to fully restore their functions. North Korea has in the past targeted South Korea's conservative newspapers, banks and government institutions. The biggest hacking effort attributed to Pyongyang was a 10-day denial of service attack in 2011 that antivirus firm McAfee, part of Intel, dubbed "Ten Days of Rain". It said that attack was a bid to probe the South's computer defenses in the event of a real conflict.
