The Korea Communications Commission said the information came from Vietnamese firm Bach Khoa Internetwork Security. Vietnam is part of a regional grouping known as the Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team.<\/p>\n
“The (British) server appears to have controlled compromised handler servers” which spread viruses, said Park Cheol-Soon, a network protection team leader of the government-run communications commission.<\/p>\n
“However, it needs more investigation to confirm whether this server was the final attacker server or not,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Seoul’s National Intelligence Service earlier said North Korea was a prime suspect in the attacks, which briefly crippled major government and commercial websites in the United States and South Korea.<\/p>\n
Park said the apparent discovery of a master server in Britain did not mean North Korea could not be held responsible. “It does not either bolster or undermine claims that someone has done the attacks,” he said.<\/p>\n
The “distributed denial of service” attacks involved sending multiple requests for website access from tens of thousands of “zombie” computers so the sites became overloaded.<\/p>\n
The computers that were used to send the flood of requests had been infected with a virus that allowed attackers to control them anonymously.<\/p>\n
The Korea Communications Commission said 166 000 “zombie” computers in 74 countries were believed used.<\/p>\n
The intelligence service Monday downgraded its alert against the cyberattacks, saying they were “fizzling out” and most targeted sites had normal traffic restored.<\/p>\n
North Korea has staged a nuclear test and numerous missile launches in recent weeks, raising regional tensions. But a cyberattack, if confirmed, would be a new tactic.<\/p>\n
Hong Min-Pyo, president of security solution provider Shiftworks, told AFP Wednesday it was technically impossible to trace who initiated the attacks.<\/p>\n
Shiftworks has also tracked down a server in New Jersey that was believed to have been spreading the so-called malware, he said.<\/p>\n
“DDos attacks are designed to hide the attackers,” Hong told AFP<\/p>\n