(EDITORIAL from the Korea Herald on July 10)

Cyber attacks

On Tuesday, Korea got a glimpse of what a war in the not-too-distant future could
be like.
Starting Tuesday evening, several major websites crashed as they came under
distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks launched from more than 22,000
virus-infected personal computers.

These zombie PCs are suspected of having been planted with the virus that
launched the DDoS attacks after the users logged in to certain internet portals
or downloaded certain files from the internet. Distributed denial of service
attacks crash or slow down websites by launching millions of simultaneous
attempts to access target sites.
The Blue House website was attacked, as were the websites of the Defense
Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the National Assembly. Major portals, banks and a
newspaper were also attacked. A total of 26 websites were either paralyzed or
rendered unstable by the DDoS attacks on Tuesday.
The second wave of the attacks started Wednesday evening, this time aiming at the
National Intelligence Service's cyber security unit and a host of private cyber
security companies. These attacks seem to be an effort to prevent efforts to deal
with the DDoS attacks. A total of 16 sites were targeted in the second wave of
DDoS attacks launched from 29,000 PCs.
Cyber security experts predicted a third wave of attacks to begin Thursday
evening, targeting seven government and commercial websites.
Several websites in the United States also came under attack, apparently
beginning July 4. The White House website and the New York Stock Exchange website
were among those attacked.
While the DDoS attacks appear to be primitive, as far as cyber attacks go, it is
not difficult to imagine major disruptions caused by multiple, sustained attacks.
The government said that no sensitive information had been hacked into, but the
possibility of hostile hackers gaining access to such information in the future
now seems quite real.
As one of the world's most wired countries, with more than 95 percent of
households enjoying high-speed internet services, Korea is particularly
vulnerable to cyber attacks. More than a million hacking attempts are made
everyday and the number of reported hacking cases have increased by 30 percent
over the last five years.
Despite the growing internet usage, there is little awareness of the need for
cyber security. For example, the government's budget for cyber security amounts
to a meager 2 to 3 percent of its information technology-related budget.
We have seen how we are vulnerable to even rather elementary cyber attacks and
how even these crude attacks can cause disruptions. Much needs to be done to
improve cyber security before it is too late.
(END)