Somebody (North Korea?) hammers US computers
US and South Korean government computers have been attacked and brought down over the past few days. One or more botnets have been using DDoS attacks and have successfully disabled sites such as the US Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission, and Secret Service. The attacks have also targeted the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange. North Korea is a possible suspect but no definitive information about who is behind the attacks has been announced. The AP reports:
Attacks on federal computer networks are common, ranging from nuisance hacking to more serious assaults, sometimes blamed on China. U.S. security officials also worry about cyber attacks from al-Qaida or other terrorists.
This time, two government officials acknowledged that the Treasury and Secret Service sites were brought down, and said the agencies were working with their Internet service provider to resolve the problem. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, said problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.
Keynote Systems is a mobile and Web site monitoring company based in San Mateo, Calif. The company publishes data detailing outages on Web sites, including 40 government sites it watches.
According to Rushlo, the Transportation Web site was “100 percent down” for two days, so that no Internet users could get through to it. The FTC site, meanwhile, started to come back online late Sunday, but even on Tuesday Internet users still were unable to get to the site 70 percent of the time.
Cyberwarfare is a reality and I hope the US Homeland Security Department is up to dealing with it.
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