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Cyber Attack Targets The White House, Pentagon & Wall Street
The powerful attack that overwhelmed computers at U.S. and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than realized, also targeting the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange.
An early analysis of the malicious software used in the attack found its targets also included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post. Many of the organizations appeared to successfully blunt the sustained attacks
The attack was remarkably successful. Some of the affected government websites — such as the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission and Secret Service — were still reporting problems days after it started during the July 4 holiday. South Korean Internet sites began experiencing problems Tuesday.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the nation’s main spy agency, told a group of South Korean lawmakers Wednesday it believes that North Korea or North Korean sympathizers in the South were behind the attacks, according to an aide to one of the lawmakers briefed on the information.
The aide spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the information. The National Intelligence Service — South Korea’s main spy agency — said it couldn’t immediately confirm the report, but it said it was cooperating with American authorities.
Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and “advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks.”
Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said the fact that the government websites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack.
Attacks on federal computer networks are common, ranging from nuisance hacking to more serious assaults, sometimes blamed on China. U.S. security officials also worry about cyber attacks from al-Qaeda or other terrorists.
This time, two government officials acknowledged that the Treasury and Secret Service sites were brought down, and said the agencies were working with their Internet service provider to resolve the problem. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, said problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.
Keynote Systems is a mobile and website monitoring company based in San Mateo, California. The company publishes data detailing outages on websites, including 40 government sites it watches.
According to Rushlo, the Transportation website was “100% down” for two days, so that no Internet users could get through to it. The FTC site, meanwhile, started to come back online late Sunday, but even on Tuesday Internet users still were unable to get to the site 70% of the time.
Websites of major South Korean government agencies, including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, and some banking sites, were paralyzed Tuesday. An initial investigation found that many personal computers were infected with a virus ordering them to visit major official websites in South Korea and the United States at the same time, Korea Information Security Agency official Shin Hwa-su said.
