South Korea sites fall under heavy DDoS attack

[nsane.forums]

Government begins mass PC vaccination campaign

A surprise distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack briefly took down 29 web sites belonging to South Korean government and businesses.

The attack targeted government ministries, the National Assembly, local and resident US military systems and banking services, resulting in the brief shut down of an online stock exchange. All sites are now back online but experts are reporting another attack will occur at the same time tomorrow.

"There was a DDoS attack, but no damage was done," an official from the presidential office told the BBC.

There are similarities between this DDoS campaign that took down web sites in July 2009. These have since been attributed to North Korean hacking.

However the Korea Internet Security Agency said that the attack used around 21,000 infected Pc, compared to the estimated 115,000 that hit the country in 2009, local media reports.

The government has begun issuing free anti-virus software to deal with any local infections but said many of the attacks came from outside South Korea.

Whether or not this was a politically motivated attack remains to be seen, said Mark Darvill, director of security firm AEP Networks.

The fact that each and every one of the organisations hit play a key role in the national security of South Korea and its economy suggest that this is a targeted attack. Governments should sit up, take note and be prepared."

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[Codify]

Most South Koreans still use IE, because so many government sites are dependent on antiquated ActiveX controls. I had to use IE+ActiveX just to view a Seoul bus timetable, that could have been done in simple HTML by a 5 year old. No wonder so many of their computers have been infected into botnets.