Official: Major SKorean government Web sites, banks hit by suspected cyber attack

SKorean Web sites hit by suspected cyber attack

SEOUL, South Korea — Suspected cyber attacks paralyzed Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, banks and Internet sites in a barrage that appeared linked to similar attacks in the U.S., South Korean officials said Tuesday.

The sites of the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, Korea Exchange Bank and top Internet portal Naver went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, said Ahn Jeong-eun, a spokeswoman at Korea Information Security Agency.

They appeared to be linked to the knockout of service of Web sites of several government agencies in the United States, though investigators are still unsure who was behind the attacks, Ahn said.

An initial investigation found that many personal computers were infected with a virus program ordering them to visit major official Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. at the same time, Korea Information Security Agency official Shin Hwa-su said.

The U.S. sites were hit by a widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4, The Associated Press has learned.

In the United States, the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government.

Some of the South Korea sites remained unstable or inaccessible on Wednesday morning.

Ahn said there were no immediate reports of financial damage or leaking of confidential national information. The alleged attacks appeared aimed only at paralyzing Web sites, she said.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that there has been no leak of key military information.

The paralysis took place because of denial of service attacks, in which floods of computers all try to connect to a single site at the same time, overwhelming the server that handles the traffic, the South Korean agency said in a statement.

The information agency is investigating the case with police and prosecutors, said spokeswoman Ahn.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that prosecutors have found some of the cyber attacks on the South Korean sites were accessed from overseas. Yonhap, citing an unnamed prosecution official, said the cyber attack used a method common to Chinese hackers.

However, Shin, the Information Security Agency spokesman, said the initial probe had not yet uncovered evidence about where the cyber outages originated.

Calls to South Korean police and police prosecutors went unanswered Wednesday.