Cyber attackers slowing down US and South Korean websites could enter a new phase Friday by attacking personal computers and wiping out hard disks, a South Korean government agency and web security firm said. North Korea was originally a prime suspect for launching the cyber attacks, but it was not on a list of five countries where the attacks may have originated, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said. The KCC said host websites believed behind the original attacks were based in Germany, Austria, Georgia, the United States and South Korea. The precise location of the hackers behind the attacks was still unknown, it said. South Korea's National Intelligence Service, or NIS, on preliminary investigations of the IP addresses, however, told lawmakers Friday, that the cyber attackers used 86 IP addresses in 16 countries. The attacks targeting dozens of government and business sites in South Korea and the United States did not cause major damage or security breaches, experts said, but the KCC warned a new phase at 1500 GMT Friday could cause severe damage to PCs. Leading South Korean web security firm Ahnlab, which has closely examined the attacks, said the new phase would target data on tens of thousands of infected personal computers. “The affected computers will not be able to boot and their storage files will be disabled,” said Lee Byung-cheol of Ahnlab. Almost all of the websites that were out of service this week, including the South's Defense Ministry, were up and running while Lee said the damage to Internet locations was dwindling due to better safeguards. South Korean MPs briefed by the National Intelligence Service said although websites in North Korea were not on the list, Pyongyang was still considered a suspect, Yonhap news agency said. Intelligence sources say North Korean leader Kim Jong-il launched a cyber warfare unit several years ago. US officials would not speculate on who might be behind the attacks but noted that US government websites face attacks or scams “millions of times” a day. This week's attacks saturated target websites with access requests generated by malicious software planted on personal computers. This overwhelmed some targeted sites and slowed server response to legitimate traffic. The so-called “distributed denial of service” hacking attack spreads viruses on PCs, turning them into zombies to simultaneously connect to specific sites, unbeknown to owners, experts said.
