American and South Korean government agency websites have been attacked by, what some may call, cyberterrorists. The sites have been mostly inoperable since the attacks began during the July 4th holiday weekend.
Access to at least 11 major Web sites in South Korea — including those of the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, the mass-circulation daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo and the top Internet portal Naver.com — have crashed or slowed down to a crawl since Tuesday evening, according to the government’s Korea Information Security Agency.
Major U.S. websites were also targeted, including those of the White House, Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange. The National Intelligence Service feels confident that the attacks were executed not by an individual, but by a “specific organization or on a state level.
The South Korean news agency, Yonhap, has reported that the National Intelligence Service believes North Korea or pro-North Korean groups are responsible.
This high-level attack is reminiscent of the cyber warfare reportedly enacted by Russia towards Georgia just one year ago. Corresponding with Russia’s ground war, the country also launched attacks on websites of Georgia’s president, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense, adding to the country’s chaos.
The attacks will be difficult to trace, said Professor Peter Sommer, an expert on cyberterrorism at the London School of Economics. “Even if you are right about the fact of being attacked, initial diagnoses are often wrong,” he said Wednesday.
The fact that cyber attacks are so difficult to trace gives attackers the confidence to continue their crimes of cyber warfare on a prolific level — all at the expense of confidential personal information and even classified government records.
Will the Obama Administration’s multi-billion dollar cyber security project be strong enough to stop such sophisticated hackers?