July web outage traced to N Korea

The web outages in South Korea and the US that occurred in July have reportedly been traced back to a North Korean ministry.

The IP address - the web equivalent of a physical address - of the attacks has been traced to North Korea's ministry of post and telecommunications, according to the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper.

Quoting anonymous MPs, the newspaper reported that the head of South Korea's National Intelligence Service told parliamentarians the North Korean ministry had leased the IP address from China. The spy agency however, has refused to confirm the report.

In July, hackers tried to disrupt websites run by the governments of South Korea and the US, including those of the White House and South Korea's presidential Blue House.

Although there was little evidence to suspect North Korea, it was suggested that Pyongyang had a hand in the attacks in which several computers tried to access the websites at the same time and weaken the servers.

South Korean media ran stories alleging that North Korea had an internet warfare unit with around 500-1000 hackers, which it employed to break into US and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service.

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