Dozens of South Korean Websites Attacked

 

(SEOUL, South Korea) — Hackers attacked about 40 South Korean government and private websites Friday, prompting officials to warn of a substantial threat to the country's computers.
The South's National Cyber Security Center said they had seen signs of a "denial of service" attack, in which large numbers of computers try to connect to a site at the same time in an attempt to overwhelm the server.

A top South Korean cybersecurity company, AhnLab, said in a statement that the targets included websites at South Korea's presidential office, the Foreign Ministry, the National Intelligence Service, U.S. Forces Korea and some major financial institutions.
The Korea Communication Commission said websites had reported no immediate damage.
AhnLab spokesman Park Kun-woo said the attacks were similar to ones that have targeted South Korean websites in the past, in that they were denial of service attacks and largely targeted the same sites.
AhnLab said a computer user discovered a bug in their system Thursday night. After analyzing it, AhnLab found malicious software designed to attack websites and told the targets in advance so that they could prepare. As a result, Park said, there had only been a brief slowing of some of the websites.
AhnLab was providing free programs to repair infected computers.
Government officials have said that previous denial of service attacks on South Korean government websites were traced to China. It was not immediately clear where Friday's attack originated.

Park said people often point to China as the source of such attacks because a large amount of malware originates there. Malware is malicious software designed to access a computer without the owner's consent.
Cyberattacks on South Korea in 2009 were initially blamed on North Korea, but experts later said they had no conclusive evidence that Pyongyang was responsible.
South Korean media have previously reported that North Korea runs an Internet warfare unit aimed at hacking into U.S. and South Korean military networks to gather information and disrupt service.

 

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2057185,00.html?goback=.gde_2677290_member_45926840

US domain seizures disable 84,000 websites

Thousands of legitimate websites were apparently accidentally taken offline last week, when the US Departments for Justice and Homeland Security seized the domains of websites allegedly hosting counterfeiting and child sexual abuse content (also reported here and here).
It appears that the DHS unknowingly targetted the dynamic DNS service afraid.org, which provides URLs for 84,000 websites under subdomains of mooo.com. As a result, thousands of innocent website owners found their homepages replaced with the following message:

The seizure of mooo.com was reversed last Sunday, but at the time of writing the DHS is yet to publically acknowledge its mistake.
Domain seizures have become a subject of controversy in the US, where copyright-related seizures have become increasingly commonplace. Critics claim that the practice violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution by placing a “prior restraint” on speech.
The practice is likely to re-ignite long-standing international concerns about the US government’s privileged relationship with ICANN. Foreign governments, especially those in the Middle East under pressure from a populace newly empowered by the Internet, will draw attention to the contrast between this US action to enforce its own laws and its support for unrestricted free speech abroad.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Nominet is consulting on its own domain deletion policies. The US mistake will give Nominet reason to be very careful about adopting procedures that give an unbalanced assumption of authority to law enforcement complaints.

https://publicaffairs.linx.net/news/?p=2866