China hackers target SKorea govt website

A government-run website in South Korea was hit by a massive number of access attempts traced to China, a government ministry said Thursday.

Access to one of the sites run by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security was slowed for several hours Wednesday night because about 120 sites based in China tried to connect to it simultaneously to overwhelm its server, the ministry said in a statement.

The site was not shut down and no other damage occurred as the ministry quickly blocked access by the 120 sites with IP addresses in China. The ministry was investigating who was behind the alleged cyber attack in cooperation with the National Intelligence Service, the statement said.

Last year, government websites in South Korea and the U.S. were paralyzed due to a similar type of cyber attacks that South Korean officials believed were conducted by North Korea.

Ministry official Kim Eeung-soo, however, said there was no immediate evidence that North Korea was behind Wednesday’s attack.

South Korean media have reported that North Korea runs an Internet warfare unit aimed at hacking into U.S. and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service.

The two Koreas are still technically at war because their conflict that started in 1950 ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Associated Press

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