South Korean officials have finally tracked down the source of last month's cyber attack and the culprit is, as suspected by some, North Korea.
Last month's mysterious cyber attack that crippled banks and television stations in South Korea was executed by North Korea's intelligence agency, according to official investigators based in Seoul.
The findings were revealed in the Korea Herald today as South Korea's Ministry of Science, ICT (information communications technology) and Future Planning connected the attacks to North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau.
On March 20, the computer systems of local South Korean television stations KBS, YTN, and MBS, as well as banking firms Shinhan, Jeju, and NongHyup experienced major disruptions in what appeared to be a coordinated attack. Because of recent regional tensions, international security experts immediately raised the possibility of North Korea's involvement, but South Korean officials appeared hesitant to lay the blame on its neighbor. A day after the attack, South Korea investigators reportedly traced the attack to an IP address in China, but quickly retracted those claims, adding to the confusion regarding the source of the attack.
Finally, during a major press conference today (above), the ministry outlined the specifics of the now confirmed North Korean cyber attack. "The attacker gained control of personal computers or server computers within the target organizations at least eight months ago," the agency said. "After maintaining monitoring activities, [the attackers] sent out the command to delete data stored in the server, and distributed malware to individual computers through the central server."
Officials also tagged at least six computers in North Korea as the source of South Korean banking attacks that span as far back as June 2012.
Tensions are high in the region as North Korea has repeatedly given U.S. intelligence officials reason to believe that a provocative missile launch test may be imminent. While South Korea is reportedly unphased by the saber rattling, nearby Japan is on high alert. Earlier today, one city official in Yokohama mistakenly tweeted "North Korea has launched a missile," only to retract the erroneous message shortly thereafter, issuing an apology for the false alarm.
Earlier this month, North Korea's official Twitter and Flickr accounts were hacked, reportedly as part of "hacktivist" group Anonymous's efforts to disrupt the Communist country's Web presence.