The cyber attacks also took aim at websites of the South Korean government (the presidential Blue House, Ministry of Defense, and National Assembly), business (Shinhan Bank and Kookmin Bank), and media (Chosun Ilbo newspaper and internet portal Naver.com).

After an initial list of five targets, all U.S. government websites, 21 targets (U.S. government, commercial/e-commerce, and media sites) were hit on July 6 and by July 7, 11 targets in South Korea were added. As at July 9, the total known targets had reached 39 websites.

Some of the websites were able to fend off the attacks, but other government websites were not as prepared. Two days after the first salvo, the Transportation Department website was still 100 percent down while the Federal Trade Commission site continued to have significant problems.

South Korean intelligence officials have blamed North Korea for the attacks. The U.S. government is also looking at North Korea as the origin of the attacks, although authorities warn that it will be difficult to pinpoint the attackers so quickly.

It was a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack that used a variant of an old malware — the MyDoom worm that was spread by e-mail in January 2004, and possibly the Mytob virus. This malware essentially uses thousands of captive computers to access a site simultaneously, in effect closing it down.

Experts say that the configuration of the attack suggested the use of 50,000 to 65,000 computers. The attacking software carried the text string “get/China/DNS” (DNS here referred to China’s Internet routing system), and the data generated was based on a Korean-language browser.

In the recent attacks, one federal agency’s site was bombarded with about 1 million hits per second per attack, which was equivalent to 4 billion Internet hits occurring at the same time. The agency website had the capability to handle about 25,000 users simultaneously.

The breadth of the attack is unusual, particularly since so many government sites were targeted all at the same time.

The attack revealed that the level of protection among government websites is not equal: some sites (like the White House and the Pentagon) are more prepared than others.

The incident also spotlights this critical threat in the 21st century: cyber attacks are real and they are serious. Political cyberterrorism has come into the forefront.

Analysts at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London note that Iran and North Korea, as well as political terrorist groups, are investing more in cyber and electronic warfare. Cyber-warfare is easier to conduct. There is no difference between setting off a logic bomb and an explosive.

Safety Tips
• Enable your system to isolate and block offending IP addresses.
• Dilute DDOS attacks by distributing the network traffic across multiple connections and devices.
• Check with cybersecurity vendors for the installation of DDOS protection services.