<목욜정모> July 16th, 2009. Thursday meeting's topic

[뺑끼(운영자)]

Cyberattacks Jam Government and Commercial Web Sites

in U.S. and South Korea

 Employees of the Korea Internet Security Center inside a monitoring room in Seoul on Wednesday.

By CHOE SANG-HUN and JOHN MARKOFF

Published: July 8, 2009   

 

SEOUL, South Korea — A wave of cyberattacks aimed at 27 American and South Korean government agencies and commercial Web sites temporarily jammed more than a third of them over the past five days, and several sites in South Korea came under renewed attack on Thursday.

The latest bout of attacks, which affected service on one government and six commercial Web sites in South Korea, was relatively minor, and all but two of the sites were fully functional within a few hours, an official from the state-run Korea Communications Commission said.

“An aggressive distribution of vaccine programs against the attack has helped fight back,” the official, Shin Hwa-soo, said. “But we are not keeping our guard down. We are distributing the vaccine programs as widely as possible and monitoring the situations closely because there might be a new attack.”

Officials and computer experts in the United States said Wednesday that the attacks, which began over the July 4 weekend, were unsophisticated and on a relatively small scale, and that their origins had not been determined. They said 50,000 to 65,000 computers had been commandeered by hackers and ordered to flood specific Web sites with access requests, causing them to slow or stall. Such robotic networks, or botnets, can involve more than a million computers.

The Web sites of the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department were all affected at some point over the weekend and into this week, The Associated Press reported Tuesday, citing American officials.

A White House spokesman, Nick Shapiro, said in a statement on Wednesday that “all federal Web sites were back up and running” by Tuesday night and that the White House site had also been attacked.

He said, “The preventative measures in place to deal with frequent attempts to disrupt whitehouse.gov’s service performed as planned, keeping the site stable and available to the general public, although visitors from regions in Asia may have been affected.”

The Web site of the New York Stock Exchange also came under attack, as well as the sites of Nasdaq, Yahoo’s finance section and The Washington Post.

Researchers who are following the attacks said that they began July 4 and focused on the small group of United States government Web sites, but that the list later expanded to include commercial sites in the United States and then commercial and government sites in South Korea. Files stored on computers that are part of the attacking system show that 27 Web sites are now targets.

In South Korea, at least 11 major sites have slowed or crashed since Tuesday, including those of the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, the mass-circulation newspaper Chosun Ilbo and the top Internet portal Naver.com, according to the government’s Korea Information Security Agency.

On Wednesday, some of the South Korean sites regained service, but others remained unstable or inaccessible.

“This is not a simple attack by an individual hacker, but appears to be thoroughly planned and executed by a specific organization or on a state level,” the South Korean spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said in a statement, adding that it was cooperating with the American authorities to investigate the attacks.

The spy agency said the attacks appeared to have been carried out by a hostile group or government, and the news agency Yonhap reported that the agency had implicated North Korea or pro-North Korean groups.

A spokesman at the intelligence agency said it could not confirm‎ the Yonhap report about North Korea’s possible role. The opposition Democratic Party accused the spy agency of spreading rumors to whip up support for an antiterrorism bill that would give it more power.

Although most of the North Korean military’s hardware is decrepit, the South Korean authorities have recently expressed concern over possible cyberattacks from the North. In May, South Korean media reported that North Korea was running a cyberwarfare unit that operated through the Chinese Internet network and tried to hack into American and South Korean military networks. United States computer security researchers who have examined the attacking software and watched network traffic played down the sophistication and extent of the attacks.

“I would call this a garden-variety attack,” said Jose Nazario, manager of security research at Arbor Networks, a network security firm that is based in Chelmsford, Mass. He said that the attackers were generating about 23 megabits of data a second, not enough to cause major disruptions of the Internet at most of the sites that were being attacked.

“The code is really pretty elementary in many respects,” he added. “I’m doubting that the author is a computer science graduate student.”

As for possible origins, there were only hints. One researcher, Joe Stewart, of Secureworks’ Counter Threat Unit in Atlanta, said the attacking software contained the text string “get/China/DNS,” with DNS referring to China’s Internet routing system. He said that it appeared that the data generated by the attacking program was based on a Korean-language browser.

Amy Kudwa, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said that the agency was aware of the attacks and that it had issued a notice to federal departments and agencies, as well as to other partner organizations, advising them of steps to take to help mitigate attacks.

Choe Sang-Hun reported from Seoul, and John Markoff from San Francisco. Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.

Q)

1. What is Dos(dinial-of-service) attack? What happens after all?

2. Do you know anyone who have damage of DDos?

3. Have you ever had a problem by virus in your computrer?

4. One of party and some members of the National Assembly are pointing out N.K. as the criminal who spreaded DDoS.  Do you agree thier insistence?

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More Rain Forecast Until Today

By Kim Rahn Staff Reporter

Central parts of the peninsula will experience heavy rainfall again through Tuesday evening, the Korea Meteorological Administration said Monday. The weather agency said that a low pressure system will pass through North Korea, also pouring heavy rain over Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, along with thunder, lightening and strong winds. Up to 80 millimeters of rainfall is forecast in northern Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces through Tuesday midnight, 30 to 60 millimeters in Seoul, southern Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces and parts of the Chungcheong region, and 20 to 40 millimeters in other parts of the nation. ``Residents in Gyeonggi and northern Gangwon provinces are advised to take precautions against damage such as landslides from torrential rains,'' a weatherman said. Typhoon Soudelor, which is approaching southern China, is likely to add to the front passing over Korea, he said. The front is expected to head toward the southern parts of the country Wednesday. Jamsu Bridge over the Han River in Seoul, which has been inundated and closed since Sunday morning, was opened Monday evening. ``But it can be closed again due to the rain through Tuesday, so drivers are advised to check the bridge's condition before heading toward it,'' the weather official said. In the meantime, the disaster management authorities said four people died, another one went missing and 146 people had their houses inundated in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province following Sunday's heavy rain. More than 5,300 hectares of farmland in Gyeonggi, Gangwon and South Chungcheong provinces were flooded. The central parts of the nation were hit with about 300 millimeters of rainfall Sunday.

rahnita@koreatimes.co.kr

Q) 

1. Do you like rain? What makes you feel good and bad in rainy day?

2. Have you got any hobby or habit when raining?

3. Have you ever damaged or affected from a heavy rain and a wrong forecast (house, car, important appointment) ?

4. What do you want to eat when raining outside. (소주,막걸리,파전,짬뽕 등등)

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[카리스마]

모여서 토론하는건가요? 오디서...?

[아나키스트]

이번주무조건갈께요형아

[진환 a.k.a JIN]

첫번째 주제, 완전 최고!!! 4minute이 부릅니다. Hot Issue!! :-)

[alphacyw]

ㅋ_ㅋ 여기 노래도 불러요? 나도 가야지

[Serena]

우리 회장님 이번 한 주도 수고 많으셨습니다~^^