South Korean government, banking websites come under cyber attack

Mar 4, 2011, 9:41 GMT

Seoul - The websites of 29 South Korean institutions including the presidential office have come under cyber attack, resulting in some closing down temporarily, media reports said Friday.

The websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Unification ministry, the Defence Ministry, the US Forces in Korea and banks were hit in the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack from 10 am (0100 GMT), Yonhap News Agency reported, citing a statement from AhnLab Inc, a computer security company.

DDoS attacks disable access to servers and harm computer hard drives.

AhnLab estimated that 4,300 to 11,000 computers were infected with malicious programmes used for the attack, but said it was distributing software to deal with the problem.

'There was a DDoS attack, but no damage was done,' an official from the presidential office said.

Further attacks were expected to occur at 6:30 pm (0930 GMT), the company said.

'We have sent investigators to two companies operating file-sharing sites that were used to spread malicious codes to zombie computers this morning,' the National Police Agency's Cyber Terror Response Center said.

AhnLab said the attack was similar to one in July 2009 that hit 23 South Korean websites.