San Francisco: Cyberattacks on US and South Korean military websites in March may have been a test by North Korea or sympathisers, according to a report released on Tuesday by computer security firm McAfee.
“We believe this incident... has very clear anti-Korean and anti-US political motivations,” McAfee said in a report titled `Ten Days of Rain`.
“The combination of technical sophistication juxtaposed with relatively limited execution and myopic outcome is analogous to bringing a Lamborghini to a go-cart race,” McAfee said in its findings.
“As such, the motivations appear to outweigh the attack, making this truly seem like an exercise to test and observe response capabilities,” it said.
McAfee security researchers said it was 95 percent likely that the culprits behind the online assault in March were also behind July 04, 2009 cyberattacks on US and South Korean websites.
Banking, military and government websites in South Korea and sites for US forces in that country were hit with distributed denial of service attacks on March 04. DDoS attacks overwhelm websites with requests, causing them slow down or be inaccessible.
Bureau Report
