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Key Korean Web sites sustain renewed cyber attacks
SEOUL, July 9 (Yonhap) -- South Korea on Thursday came under a third round of cyber attacks, with the nation's key government and private Web sites reporting temporary paralyses or severe access disruptions, government and industry officials said.
Half a dozen Web sites operated by key government bodies, including the National Assembly, defense ministry, foreign ministry and the National Intelligence Service reported access delays and failures starting around 6 p.m., said the officials.
Kookmin Bank, the mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo, leading computer vaccine firm Ahn Lab Inc. and the United States Forces Korea also said their Web sites underwent temporary access disruptions Thursday evening, apparently due to the so-called "distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack."
DDoS attacks refer to a situation in which a multitude of compromised computers attack a single target, thereby causing denial of service for legitimate users of the compromised site.
Kookmin Bank, a leading state-funded lender, said it was forced to shut down its Internet banking site for about 30 minutes until 6:30 p.m. after the site came under the DDoS attack from unidentified hackers.
But the Ministry of Public Administration and Security's electronic government site and the nation's leading portal sites, including Naver and Auction, escaped the indiscriminate cyber attacks and were offering normal services as of Thursday evening, said the officials.
"A third round of cyber attacks has already begun. But it is difficult for now to estimate the exact damage to domestic Web sites," said an official at the state-run Korea Information Security Agency.
"The government is working hard to minimize damage from the latest cyber attack through closer cooperation with relevant institutions and companies," said the official.
Beginning Tuesday, the DDoS attacks overwhelmed major Web sites in South Korea and the United States, virtually taking them off-line. Unidentified hackers began their initial attacks at 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, blocking Internet users from accessing 26 Web sites, including the official site of South Korea's presidential office Cheong Wa Dae and 14 government and private Web sites in the U.S.
Amid suspicions that North Korea may be behind the recent wave of Web site outages, the unidentified hackers staged their second cyber attack on Wednesday evening.
Ahn Lab warned earlier that a third wave of cyber attacks was expected to hit government and private Web sites in South Korea Thursday evening.
ycm@yna.co.kr
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