Cyber attacks 'traced to North Korea'
North Korea was the source of high-profile cyber attacks in July that caused massive internet failures in South Korea and the US, it was reported today.
South Korea’s main spy agency told MPs that the North’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications used the IP address – the web equivalent of a street address or phone number – that triggered the cyber attacks, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said.
The North’s ministry leased the IP address from China, the report said, citing unidentified MPs briefed yesterday by the head of South Korea’s main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service.
The spy agency would not confirm the report.
The July attacks, in which floods of computers tried to connect to a single website at the same time to overwhelm the server, caused failures on prominent government-run sites in both countries, including those of the White House and South Korea’s presidential Blue House.
North Korea was immediately suspected of involvement in the attacks but there has been little concrete evidence.
South Korean media reported at the time that North Korea ran an internet warfare unit that tried to hack into US and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service, and that the regime had between 500 and 1,000 hacking specialists.
