In the past several days, it appears that at least 35 US- and South Korea-based websites were under attack by a botnet group of computers, causing the attacked domains to become very slow and unresponsive and even putting many out of commission for periods of time. Among the domains were many government websites of their respective countries. It’s unconfirmed as to where exactly the attack is being launched from, but South Korean officials believe it to be North Koran forces or those sympathetic to their cause.Beginning the fourth of July, also the United States’ Independence Day (coincidence? I think not), several government websites began to be attacked by a botnet of some 60,000 computers that were– you guessed it– running Microsoft Windows. The botnet’s goal was a denial of service attack: infected computers access the specified webpage over and over with the intention to block service to legitimate users. The botnet was still at large today attacking sites such as the Washington Post.
United States government website attacks are common, most of them being negligible nuisances more than anything. Throughout the weekend, though, all of the attacked US federal sites were down at varying times, some of them for two days. Among the affected websites were the Federal Trade Commission, the US Treasury, the Department of Transportation, the White House, and the Secret Service. Though I’m not entirely sure this source is completely legitimate or updated, there seems to be a list of targeted websites posted (originally in Korean).
While some officials think that North Korea may be behind the attacks, others say not to jump to conclusions too quickly:
In the dozens of instances that I worked over the past decade, I cannot recall a single instance in which someone intending to attack came from the source it appeared to have come from. Most attackers in cyberspace try to mask who they really are.
–Dale W. Meyerrose, former chief information officer of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
The botnet, described by a researcher, was described as “amateurish” and that it was full of programming errors. However, the fact that websites are still suffering into the fifth day says something about the enormity and coordination of the attack. Other sources say that the list of targeted websites can be and has been altered– websites attacked on July 4th weren’t being attacked later and vice versa.
Who knew that while I was watching fireworks blow up over my city’s park, some shady characters somewhere on the globe were plotting my country’s digital demise? This only makes me want to download more updates to protect my computers running Windows… or use the ones running Linux more… and put the US flag as the desktop background.
I believe that the next big “terrorist attack” will be staged to appear as coming from the Internet, thus giving the go to censorship and monitoring of the net, as well as more “war on terror”.
Anyone that connects vital services to the Internet is doing an error today, that someday we will all pay for.
For less important websites a few hours of ddos is not such a big deal, and I don’t think a nation would attack another nation in that way.
If it this was really perpetuated by North Korea, then there is no need to be shocked.
http://www.kcckp.net/kcc_e/index.htm (Official North Korean computer science corporation)
North Korea has a pool of professional hackers and they can perpetuate an internet-based attack or espionage very secretively with relative success.
But here’s the interesting part: North Korean programmers have made a computer game AI, Korean-Japanese-English translation software, voice recognition software, medical task software, etc.
For someone who knows quite well about this, North Korea is not in a shape to conduct a full-fledge war in real life.
Edited 2009-07-08 21:34 UTC
Wow, the People’s Republic of Korea never ceases to amaze me.
It turns out they are selling their OCR software commercially in Japan with all the bombs flying over our heads.
You gotta love US Embargos.
At least they could be good Communists and release the source code under the ISC license.
North Korea is not Communist, but Socialist with Korean characteristics (AKA Juche ideology). It’s very sad that people don’t know very much about North Korea, especially Westerners.
you should try being Canadian, nobody knows anything about us, and we’re freaking right next to the US. It has been shown many, many times the prevailing US view of us is that we all live in igloos, say “eh” after every sentence, that it snows year round here, our capital city is Toronto (it’s not) and we all love hockey (we do).
There isn’t many people who really take the time to learn about anybody other than their own group/country/whatever.
It’s kind of a shame.
I am Canadian of South Korean origin and we tend to like Canada more than USA.
But anyways, I’ve tried many ways to get a Windows compatible North Korean software via China or Japan. No luck.
I was led to believe there more curling sheets than ice* hockey rinks. And that’s a good thing, because curling is frakking awesome.
*Hockey without the “ice” qualifier is something different – something we Dutch are pretty good at
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_hockey
Edited 2009-07-09 13:19 UTC
Curling is big in Canada, but there is definitely more hockey rinks then curling rinks, at least over the entire country (we’re large enough that it probably varies by province.)
Lacross is pretty big here too (It’s actually our national sport, not hockey, who knew)
Damn, even I (is that arrogant?) thought Toronto to be the capital of Canada.
Nope, it’s Ottawa. Toronto is our biggest city, however, and currently our smelliest (garbage strike)
Hey, I live in Brazil. A lot of people think there are monkeys on the streets, that our capital is Rio de Janeiro (or worst, Buenos Aires) and that the only think you’ll see here is soccer and carnival.
Grammar correction: It’s kind of a shame, eh.
You hoser! 🙂
As Dave Foley put it:
“And of course, how can we discuss Canada without discussing the weather. Yes, it is cold in Canada – it is very, very cold. Are you happy now? Yes, the average year-around temperature is 273 degrees below zero – but that is celcius.”
Note that what’s known as Communism nowadays in the World that has continued to evolve since the 1950s is not the original “Communism” but “Marxism-Leninism” and its derivatives. Juche falls by that definition into Communism because it is, according to messiah Kim Il Sung himself, a derivative of Marxism-Leninism. Other than that, it is rather unoriginal and further developments by Kim Jong Il have many parallelisms with Stalinism, another Communism variant.
What the parties and Nations choose to call themselves has little relevance, as the Chinese Communist Party can hardly be defined as Communist by any standard(more like 1900s European Capitalism) and the “Socialist” Parties in Europe and the developed world in general are, at their best, Socially Liberal Conservatives.
“Yes, we should not use the US operating system Windows, but let’s put the US flag as the desktop background and use more our Linux systems.”
…oh, piss off!
Just went on a South Korean news website. Now there is a good possibility that the servers in KBS (South Korea’s National TV service) might be hacked.
Sadly I can’t give you a link because it is not in English.
Ok, can somebody explain this to me: the official North Korean news agency doesn’t even have it’s website based at home but rather in Japan (http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm). It is, like the whole country, a bit outdated … yet North Koreans are supposedly behind such an attack. Sound like a lot of b.s. to me.
Not a BS per se. North Korea does have internet access but it’s only for “privileged people”. Because North Korea’s internet environment is rather isolated, it needs an oversea server for its English news. In this case, it’s Japan.