Seoul , South Korea ( CNN ) -- The suspected cyberattack that struck South Korean banks and media companies this week did n't originate from a Chinese IP address , South Korean officials said Friday , contradicting their previous claim . The Korea Communications Commission , a South Korean regulator , said that after `` detailed analysis , '' the IP address that was thought to be from China was determined to be an internal IP address from one of the banks that was infected by the malicious code . It said , though , that `` the government has confirmed that the attack was from a foreign land . '' An IP address is the number that identifies a network or device on the Internet . Widespread damage . The attack Wednesday damaged 32,000 computers and servers at media and financial companies , South Korea 's Communications Commission said . It infected banks ' and broadcasters ' computer networks with a malicious program , or malware , that slowed or shut down systems , officials and the semiofficial Yonhap News Agency said . The military stepped up its cyberdefense efforts in response to the widespread outages , which hit nine companies , Yonhap reported , citing the National Police Agency . Government computer networks did not seem to be affected , Yonhap cited the National Computing and Information Agency as saying . A joint team from government , the military and private industry was responding . How the hackers got in and spread the malicious code remains under investigation , and analysts are examining the malware , a South Korean official close to the investigation said . Blaming North Korea in the past . South Korea has accused the North of similar hacking attacks before , including incidents in 2010 and 2012 that also targeted banks and media organizations . The North rejected the allegations . The outages come amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula , with the North angrily responding to a recent U.N. Security Council vote to impose tougher sanctions on Pyongyang after the country 's latest nuclear test last month . Last week , North Korea invalidated its 60-year-old armistice with the South . It has threatened to attack its neighbor with nuclear weapons and has also threatened the United States . The armistice agreement , signed in 1953 , ended the three-year war between North and South but left the two nations technically in a state of war . The United States has deployed B-52 bombers to conduct high-profile flyovers of its South Korean ally and announced that it will deploy new ground-based missile interceptors on its West Coast against the remote possibility that North Korea could strike the United States with long-range weapons .
Wednesday 's suspected cyberattack affected 32,000 computers . Nine computers fell victim to the malicious code . The computers were n't affected . South Korea has blamed the North in the past , which has rejected the allegations .