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S. Korea Says Cyber Attack From North Wiped 48,700 Machines

Posted by Unknown on from the retaliation-will-be-swift-and-ineffective dept.

wiredmikey writes "An official investigation into a major cyber attack on South Korean banks and broadcasters last month has determined that North Korea's military intelligence agency was responsible. An investigation into access records and the malware used in the attack pointed to the North's military Reconnaissance General Bureau as the source, the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA) said on Wednesday. To spread the malware, the attackers went through 49 different places in 10 countries including South Korea, the investigation found. The attacks used malware that can wipe the contents of a computer's hard disk (including Linux machines) and damaged 48,700 machines including PCs, ATMs, and servers."

4 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Civillian cyber-casualties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Speaking as a civilian, I'd much rather prefer to both be alive and not have my livelyhood threatened, thanks. That's the worst false dichotomy I've heard all week and you should feel bad.

  2. Re:Civillian cyber-casualties by KGIII · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What I find amazing is that NK is technologically capable of causing that amount of damage both in terms of technology and infrastructure. I didn't believe they'd get enough bandwidth by using the soldiers to manually hand off the packets. I figured they'd be too busy eating grass and tree bark really.

    Okay, okay. So I'm only a little kidding. I'm still surprised they had the tech chops to pull that off OR that they were so poorly defended. It could go either way I suppose.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  3. Problem fixes itself by gnasher719 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All the vulnerable machines were wiped. So now there are no vulnerable machines anymore. Second attack will be much harder. And the percentage of Korean users doing proper backups will probably be growing :-) (Not that I'm saying people in Korea are more negligent with backups than others).

  4. Re:Civillian cyber-casualties by jabuzz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yeah just look at what happened at Royal Bank of Scotland last year. Some people at Ulster Bank (a subsidiary of RBS) where unable to access their account for the best part of a month.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_RBS_computer_system_problems

    Now imagine that every bank is in the same situation as RBS along with VISA and Mastercard.