This week's cyber attacks on South Korea are believed to have been mounted from 16 different countries, AFP reported Friday, quoting Seoul's spy agency.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) told legislators that the attacks were tracked to 86 Internet protocol addresses from 16 countries including the United States, Japan and China, according to AFP.
The lawmakers, quoting information from the NIS given in a closed briefing, said North Korea was not among the 16 countries.
On Wednesday, the spy agency told parliament's intelligence committee that it believes the communist North or its sympathizers may be behind the attacks.
A third wave of cyber attacks knocked out key government and portal sites Thursday evening,
Half a dozen Web sites, including those of the National Assembly, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, the Ministry of national Defense, Kookmin Bank, e-mail sites of online portals Daum, Naver and Paran, the major daily Chosun Ilbo and online shopping site Auction, reported access delays and failures starting around 6 p.m., according to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country's top telecom regulator.
The KCC said stored date and hard discs at 26 so-called zombie computers were destroyed as of 6 a.m. in the wake of a new form of cyber attacks targeting individual PCs.
Hackers have planted viruses in thousands of personal computers in South Korea and overseas.
In what is called a "distributed denial of service," they are programmed to swamp certain U.S. and South Korean Web sites at selected times.
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