More Web attacks, North Korea suspected [Reuters]
This past weekend, hackers began a coordinated series of distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks on several U.S. and South Korean web sites via a botnet. In the U.S., the sites that were attacked included several federal agencies and press sites, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Secret Service, the Transportation Department, and The Washington Post among others. The attack managed to slow to a crawl or shut down many of those web sites, and is thought to be a coordinated attack originating in North Korea.
Today, a new wave attacks, again suspected to be coming from North Korea, hit sites that included the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Defense web sites. Other government and banking sites in South Korea were also hit by a barrage of web traffic that slowed or shut down web sites in that country. It is unclear whether these attacks have been stemmed.
According to a defense expert in this article, North Korea has a specialized military unit with 1,000 computer hackers that is specifically dedicated to cyber attacks like this one. Earlier this year, President Obama announced the creation of a national director for the country's cybersecurity. With coordinated cyber attacks coming from North Korea aimed at critical U.S. online infrastructure, it's more important than ever that the new cybersecurity czar begin work immediately at protecting this infrastructure from attack.
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