Cyber Attack Hits South Korean Web Sites
July 7, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
A number of South Korean government Web sites were inaccessible on Wednesday, apparently taken offline by a large cyber-attack that had earlier hit U.S. government sites.
The Web site for South Korea’s president, the Blue House, and those for the National Assembly and Ministry of National Defense were all offline at Wednesday lunchtime. Also inaccessible was the home page of the Grand National Party and the Chosun Ilbo national newspaper
The Korea Internet Security Center’s security index was set at “substantial,” which is the middle of its five levels and signifies regional Internet security problems and advises all Internet users to take urgent security measures.
Local press reports said around 25 sites had been hit since late Tuesday including those of major banks including Shinhan Bank and Korea Exchange Bank and major portal Naver. All three appeared to be operating normally at Wednesday lunchtime but a prompt on the page of Shinhan Bank referenced a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack and advised users to download security software.
