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Online Attack Hits US Government Web Sites
angry tapir writes "A botnet composed of about 50,000 infected computers has been waging a war against US government Web sites and causing headaches for businesses in the US and South Korea. The attack started Saturday, and security experts have credited it with knocking the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC's) web site offline for parts of Monday and Tuesday. Several other government Web sites have also been targeted, including the Department of Transportation."
ok let's blame China now for this.
Let's not. See what offends me about this whole thing is that it's so obivious. If they'd just targeted America, it could have been anyone. But 'whoever' it was had to go and hit South Korea too, at the same time. Who hates both the US and South Korea?
By the way, don't say "Chinese Plot", they have nothing to gain from upping tensions at this point. They've been trying to bring the North Koreans into negotiations and they too have issued denounciations against NK by this point. Iran's official line is that the UK is mostly responsible for their problems, they have little to gain from doing something to the Americans and the Russians were just recently in negotiations with Obama that appear to have gone well.
How do you kill that which has no life?
The reason the U.S. wouldn't attack North Korea in a cyber war is the same reason we wouldn't attack Iran. The internet is a far more powerful tool when it is use to sway opinion than it is to cripple systems.
What always bugs me with these "cyberwar" news is that people try to put one country as responsible for them, and its always China or Russia or one of the other "bad guys". Like parent post said, their goverments have no reason to do something like DDOS attacks against US. Who's to say its not just some individual who either is pissed at US/South Korea or has such political views, or does so for whatever reason? Stop blaming countries as a whole if you dont know it.
I'm sorry, but if this has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, apparently no one cares.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
What always bugs me with these "cyberwar" news is that people try to put one country as responsible for them, and its always China or Russia or one of the other "bad guys". Like parent post said, their goverments have no reason to do something like DDOS attacks against US. Who's to say its not just some individual who either is pissed at US/South Korea or has such political views, or does so for whatever reason? Stop blaming countries as a whole if you dont know it.
But there's two things that are important here..
1. An individual would have to be VERY motivated to attack two countries at once. Especially if those countries are the US and South Korea. The only thing that makes them unique is that they're at war with North Korea. We also know for a fact that the North Korean citizen does not have internet access from reporters inside the country, in fact posessing a device that can access the outside is punishable by death there so it can't have been a NK citizen acting alone. Assuming it was just one citizen from another country they would have to be very dedicated to perform what is basically a military strike against a foreign power. Prepared to risk death to frame North Korea; that would be a very unique combination and it makes little sense.
2. North Korea has recently been upping it's cyberwar capability enough for it to show up in overseas media. They only recently sent teams to participate in international hacking challanges and appear to have done well in them. One of the main reasons I instantly suspected NK is because of this.
So my personal suspicion is based on the fact that they've recently been working hard to build up their capability in this field despite having no internet connectivity for the average citizen and then all of a sudden a cyber strike hits North Korea's enemies at the same time they're conducting missile tests in contravention of UN sanctions.
How do you kill that which has no life?
Honestly, when was the last time you went to ftc.gov? Nobody goes to those sites...
Now if google, wiki, or itunes goes down, then PANIC!
Other than Lil Kim's xbox, how much is there to attack?
Seriously, NK is dirt poor and supremely paranoid. It's not like their economy depends on the internet in any way.
And if you attack their military computers then you quickly escalate things to a very dangerous level.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
Although this might help against some types of denial of service attempt where they're making your machine work harder by servicing what look to be legitimate requests, it does not help against attempts at network saturation from incoming packets unless you can block it at the upstream router.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
If China gave us clearance to attack North Korea, I would hope that we would start by blowing up the government (using air power). I think the people would get the idea pretty quickly, so I'm not sure a deadly ground war would follow.
Yes, because that worked so well in Iraq.
You think for one second that a bored hacker even thinks that far ahead?
And lets get some perceptive here. A few website went down for less than a day. Hardly an attack that anyone should care about. And not national security or military level either.
Really a DDOS attack like this, *is* a small thing.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?