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AP/Yahoo: North Korea launches cyber attacks against United States, S. Korea


Toe Jam

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090708/ap_on_go_ot/us_cyber_attack

WASHINGTON – A widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime, The Associated Press has learned.

The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. Some of the sites were still experiencing problems Tuesday evening. Cyber attacks on South Korea government and private sites also may be linked, officials there said.

U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack. But Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."

The U.S., she said, sees attacks on its networks every day, and measures have been put in place to minimize the impact on federal Web sites.

It was not clear whether other federal government sites also were attacked.

Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, banks and Internet sites also were paralyzed in a suspected cyber attack Tuesday. An initial investigation found that many personal computers were infected with a virus ordering them to visit major official Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. at the same time, Korea Information Security Agency official Shin Hwa-su said.

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UPDATE: N. Korea suspected of attacks: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090708/ap_on_re_as/as_skorea_cyber_attack

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Hmmmm, if confirmed, will our DOD treat that as an act of war?

Always wondered how non-lethal, yet devastating attacks will be handled.

I'm not sure if it was devastating.

However.. it proves that N. Korea is really trying to screw with us now. Unacceptable, really.

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sorry, didnt mean to infer that this was devastating, I was mixing a hypothetical with an actual event.

Well I think the fact they can get in at all is an issue. If they wanted it to be devastating, it could be.

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Against what?

Tough to attack an opponent with no infrastructure of any value.

Maybe the system used to launch the attack against us? I assume they must have some form of electronic media that was used as the vehicle to launch this attack.

(I dont know enough about cyber tech and attacks to speak intelligently so i'll clam it!):)

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well weren't they saying it was a Denial of Service attack? we've got kids here who do that stuff all the time. I believe there's an organization of hackers that pulls stunts like that on the church of Scientology

If someone pulls that on pornhub I'll go ape ****.

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well weren't they saying it was a Denial of Service attack? we've got kids here who do that stuff all the time. I believe there's an organization of hackers that pulls stunts like that on the church of Scientology

4chan are not hackers they are just retards. which is why they denial of service.

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Maybe the system used to launch the attack against us? I assume they must have some form of electronic media that was used as the vehicle to launch this attack.

(I dont know enough about cyber tech and attacks to speak intelligently so i'll clam it!):)

Bot net(s).

Infect the computers of thousands of unsuspecting web users with a virus that allows you to use their computer to conduct a denial of service attack. "Infiltrate" over whatever period of time you choose. Given the borderless nature of the Internet, you can do this just as easily on US-based hosts as those overseas.

When the time comes to attack, you simply send commands to your "zombies", and they conduct the denial of service from wherever. Very little to tie it to North Korea (if anything). They probably have surrogates in Russia or China or wherever write/deploy the virus (though none of this is all that technically challenging). Chances are most of the zombies are here in the US itself.

What is the US supposed to do? Attack it's own citizens computers that are being used to conduct the denial of service (that was the position of -- if I recall correctly -- the head of the NSA, recently)?

We're in a bad spot in how to respond to this sort of threat.

My take: at some point, it probably deserves a conventional military response. NK just isn't going to be vulnerable in the same way the US is because it doesn't have the assets the US does.

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For every cyber attack on the US we should ensure another square mile in N Korea has youtube access :).

:laugh:

I really wish we could just take care of them now. Wait too long and you know they'll have nukes.

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