SEOUL: South Korea said yesterday it had sourced a damaging cyber attack on its broadcasters and banks to an IP address in China, fuelling suspicions that North Korea may have been responsible.
Previous cyber attacks blamed on North Korea – including one last year on the computer network of the conservative JoongAng newspaper in Seoul – have also been tracked back to Chinese sources.
Internet security analysts in South Korea believe official North Korean hackers learned many of their skills in China and operate from there.
The regulatory Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said Wednesday’s attack had used the Chinese IP address to access the targeted computer networks and generate malware that crashed their systems.
“The Chinese IP may trigger various assumptions,” said Park Jae-Moon, the KCC director of network policy.
“At this stage, we’re still making our best efforts to trace the origin of attacks, keeping all kinds of possibilities open,” Park said. — AFP