South Korean investigators have traced back Wednesday’s cyber attack that crippled the country’s banking system to Chinese servers. Although Chinese IP addresses were used in the attack, North Korea remains the prime suspect.
IP addresses can be manipulated and there is a chance that the attackers were merely hiding behind Chinese servers. South Korea has accused the North of launching massive cyber attacks in the past, and the general consensus among observers is that it is behind the latest attack. The attack disabled close to 32,000 computers used by three banks and three media outlets. Regulators believe the attack originated from a single organisation.
The attack came amid high tensions in the Korean peninsula and it represents an escalation of North Korean rhetoric. A few weeks ago North Korea carried out its third nuclear test and it made numerous threats against South Korea and US interests in the region. On Wednesday North Korea said it would attack US bases in Okinawa and Guam if provoked, reports Reuters. Since it doesn’t not take much to provoke Kim Jong-un, the US better watch its step in the Pacific.
North Korea also used the opportunity to tell the world that it now has drones of its own. The state news agency reported that its glorious armed forces carried out a mock drone attack on the South, staged for Kim Jong-un’s viewing pleasure. The drones went on to complete the mission and deliver a super-precision attack on enemy targets. On the same day, a missile defence unit successfully shot down a target that mimicked a Tomahawk cruise missile.
Needless to say, the reports cannot be independently confirmed, but our guess is that Pentagon analysts find them quite amusing.