Spy agency raises alert level against possible future cyber attacks

SEOUL, July 9 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's spy agency said Thursday it raised its
alert against what could be the third cyber assault on the country's major
agencies by hackers possibly linked to North Korea.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said no government documents were
retrieved or operations paralyzed by a series of attacks first detected on
Tuesday. Two rounds of so-called "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks
overwhelmed major Web sites in South Korea and the United States for the past
days.
The Web site of South Korea's presidential office and 11 other government bodies
were shut down by the cyber attack which, according to initial analysis by the
NIS, may be state-sponsored by North Korea.
Ahn Lab Inc., South Korea's largest network security company, said earlier
Thursday it expects another round of 24-hour cyber attacks on seven South Korean
Web sites from 6 p.m. on the same day. It said a file that includes a list of
targets was detected in the virus that triggered the attacks, which has infected
at least 29,000 personal computers nationwide.
"The operational networks of the president's office, defense, foreign affairs and
other ministries are safe from the DDoS assault as we disconnected them from the
Internet in March," The NIS said in a press release.
The agency said it has strengthened its alert for suspicious activities at
government-run networks and was running a 24-hour emergency contingency team to
deal with any problems from a possible third attack.
The agency said it has distributed vaccine programs to 10 network security
companies and was consulting closely with the U.S. and other allies to trace the
source of the attacks.
odissy@yna.co.kr
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