SEOUL, Jan. 17 (Yonhap) -- North Korea is believed to have attempted hacking attacks on the computer server handling the Internet for the press rooms at South Korea's presidential transition team, a committee official said Thursday.

   The attempts were discovered when intelligence authorities conducted a security checkup on the committee, the official said. Only the press rooms were affected and the team's main office remained safe, he said.

   It was not immediately clear whether the attacks caused any damage.

   "The media support team was notified of this," the official said, advising reporters to run computer antivirus programs and change passwords more often.

   A more detailed briefing will be provided later in the day, he said.

   North Korea has been accused of a series of hacking attacks on South Korea in recent years.

   On Wednesday, the National Police Agency said Pyongyang was behind last year's cyber attack on the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, saying the hacking method and Internet protocol (IP) addresses used for the attack were either similar or identical to those used by the North in previous attacks.

   A picture of a white cat grinning and covering its mouth was posted on the Web site of the JoongAng Ilbo on June 9, 2012, the NPA said. Beneath the picture were the words, "Hacked by IsOne," with complicated codes written in green.

   The main server of the firm's cyber system was also attacked and substantial data were destroyed from the production system of the newspaper, the NPA added.

   Police determined Pyongyang was the perpetrator after analyzing access records of the hacked system, malicious codes, the IP addresses of two local servers and 17 servers spread throughout 10 different countries.

   jschang@yna.co.kr
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