North Korean Cyber-Attack!! Hmmm.

Wow, did you see this in the Financial Times today Powerful Cyber-Attack Against US and South Korea Blamed on Pyongyang.

US officials publicly played down the attacks on the White House, state department, Treasury and other federal sites, noting that so-called denial-of-service attacks were a perpetual problem and an inconvenience rather than a threat to security. They refused to comment on any link to the Korean attacks or to identify suspects.

Officials acknowledged privately that the assaults, which began over the July 4 holiday in the US, were among the longest and most effective to date. The site of the Federal Trade Commission, which recently shut down a California service provider for internet criminals, recovered from the first attack but crashed yesterday under a new barrage, said monitoring firm Keynote Systems.

"For US government sites to go down so hard for so long is almost unprecedented," said an outside expert assisting federal investigator.

Come on now, this has to be an urban legend.  Next thing they are going to tell us is that a major Wall Street firm used top secret computer programs to get access codes to the New York Stock Exchange and acquire trade data that allowed them to step in front of trades micro seconds before NYSE trade commit time!  Crazy man, crazy. 

Comments

[williambanzai7]

BANZAI7 NEWS--A widespread North Korean computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service, The Transportation Department, the International Association of Financial Engineers, ISDA, Goldman Sachs, Elizabeth Taylor.com, the Department of Sanitation and other U.S. government agencies, according to officials inside and outside the government. Sites in South Korea were also affected, and South Korean intelligence officials believe the attack was carried out by North Korean or pro-Ping Pong forces angry that Dear Liberace's Fourth of July missile show was dwarfed by Macy's Annual Firework's Show on the Hudson River. Dear Liberace was seen feverishly hacking on his Samsung Netbook most of the weekend.

In the attack, an army of thousands of “Kimchee switched zombie computers” infected by the hackers’ program were ordered to request access to these Web sites simultaneously, causing an overload that caused the sites’ servers to redial 1-800-KIMCHEE, South Korean officials said.

Two US government officials acknowledged that the Treasury and Secret Service sites were brought down, and said the agencies were working with the customer service hotline of their back up internet service provider, NetZero to resolve the problem. One official speaking on condition of anonymity, cited a technical glitch in the payment of Netzero's $9.99 monthly fee which could not be easily remedied over a bank holiday weekend. Another source cited the lack of the necessary cabling for an emergency switch over to dial up service.