Were we under cyber attack from North Korea?

By Rick Moran

The feds are playing this very, very close to the vest but evidence points to North Korea as the culprit in a rash of cyber attacks that hit sensitive government agencies over the holiday weekend and has now knocked out several vital networks in South Korea.

Matthew Weaver of The Guardian has the grim details:

South Korea has been hit by a suspected cyber attack similar to one that knocked out US government websites earlier this week, officials in Seoul said today.

The suspected attack took out some of South Korea's most important websites, including those of the presidential Blue House, the defence ministry, the national assembly, Shinhan bank, Korea Exchange bank and the top internet portal Naver.

Ahn Jeong-eun, a spokeswoman for Korea Information Security Agency, said the websites of 11 organisations had either gone down or had access problems since last night.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said military intelligence officers were looking into the possibility that the attack may have been committed by North Korean hackers and pro-North Korea forces in the South.

AP reports that "A widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime..."

The wire service says that websites for the Secret Service, Treasury Department, FTC, and the Transportation Department were all hit with varying degrees of severity over the weekend.

This is just like the NoKo's, to attack our networks over the Independence Day weekend. But it is an extremely serious matter and if they start attacking other, more sensitive sites, it could lead to retaliation - if we're not sending them a message back already.

No one has started a war - yet - over a cyber attack. North Korea seems willing to test that hypothesis.