The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said attacks were “fizzling out” and most of the targeted sites had normal traffic restored.<\/p>\n
South Korean and US government and private websites were last week hit by waves of “distributed denial of service” attacks designed to swamp selected sites with traffic.<\/p>\n
The attacks were brought under control after virus-infected “botnet” hosting servers were isolated and “vaccine” programmes were widely distributed to personal computer users.<\/p>\n
The NIS said on Sunday it has yet to be sure that North Koreans were behind the attacks but it sees them a prime suspect.<\/p>\n
It told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing Friday that a North Korean military research centre called “Number 110” seems to have orchestrated the attacks, according to Yonhap news agency.<\/p>\n
The army’s general staff runs the centre which is a “well-trained unit for cyber attacks,” legislators were reportedly told.<\/p>\n
Yonhap, quoting an intelligence source, said Sunday that North Korea had stolen personal data on at least 1.65 million South Koreans through hacking into various websites since 2004.<\/p>\n
The North has staged a nuclear test and numerous missile launches in recent weeks, raising regional tensions. But a cyber attack, if confirmed, would be a new tactic.<\/p>\n