Blue House website, Naver hit with Internet attack

By Kim Tong-hyung

Staff reporter

A number of South Korean websites, including those of the Cheong Wa Dae presidential office and top search engine Naver, were subject to Internet attacks designed to cripple their performances.

However, the latest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks appeared as too timid to create any meaningful havoc as of Wednesday night.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC), which was monitoring the situation, was suspecting that the attacks weren’t the results of particular intention, but rather a reflex from some of the malicious software remaining in local computers compromised during the massive DDoS attacks of last year.

The websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, and the Korea Exchange Bank were the other targets of the recent DDoS attacks, the KCC said.

``The volume and strength of the current DDoS attack was measured to be very small,’’ said an official from KCC’s network security unit.

``It’s plausible that some of the `zombie’ computers infected in the mass DDoS attack of last year weren’t cleaned completely and unintentionally inflicted another DDoS attack on the sites. Computer users are advised to update their anti-virus programs.’’

DDoS attacks are mounted when cyber criminals use viruses to hijack numerous computers and flood targeted websites with junk data to overwhelm them. Targeted websites are slowed down or made inaccessible for days.

Combating DDoS attacks is a laborious and costly job, as the compromised computers, called ``zombies,’’ infiltrate the Internet, making it difficult to track down the attackers.

Korea's computer security mettle was tested unfavorably during a massive DDoS attack that crippled over 80,000 computers at homes and offices in July last year.