North Korea Behind Cyberattack On US and South Korean Gov't Websites

Several major US and South Korean government websites were disabled by a North Korean denial of service attack beginning on July 4.

Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

"It certainly seems to be a well-organized attack," an anonymous government official told The Washington Post. "There are a lot of computers involved. What we don't know is who is orchestrating it."

The Korea Information Security Agency also attributed the attacks to denial of service.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, said he doubts whether the impoverished North has the capability to knock down the Web sites.

But Hong Hyun-ik, an analyst at the Sejong Institute think tank, said the attack could have been done by either North Korea or China, saying he "heard North Korea has been working hard to hack into" South Korean networks.

North Korea devotes nearly all of its resources to military and nuclear efforts, and cyberspace is simply another battleground. It would be unwise to underestimate the North Korean ability to launch cyberattacks on government websites, particularly DoS attacks, given that there are hacking communities that devote themselves to discussing these very scenarios.

They have their sympathizers as well, and I wouldn't rule out Chinese involvement as well.

That's on the heels of a report saying that US cyberdefense systems don't work. In fact, the latest iteration of the system (Einstein 2), which alerts officials that an attack is underway, isn't going to be ready for another 18 months. The system can't thwart attacks that it isn't familiar with. One of the biggest problems is concerns over privacy, particularly since the system is being rolled out on telecommunications networks operated by various companies, including AT&T. A third iteration of Einstein may be able to thwart attacks, but there's no roll-out date.

Then again, federal authorities aren't doing much better in protecting government buildings as undercover investigators had no problem sneaking bomb materials into federal buildings.

The Government Accountability Office said investigators carried bomb-making materials past security at 10 federal buildings. Security at these buildings and a total of about 9,000 federal buildings around the country is provided by the Federal Protective Service, a target of the probe.

Once GAO investigators got the materials in the buildings, the report said, they constructed explosive devices and carried them around inside. For security reasons, the GAO report did not give the location of the buildings.

The report was made available to The Associated Press in advance of a hearing scheduled Wednesday of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.