Ordinary Hackers Could be Behind Attacks Against South Korean & US Websites

According to security researchers, the latest 'denial of service' (DOS) attacks against the websites in the United States and South Korea are not more damaging than ordinary spam that might have been launched with the purpose to make economic gains.

Generally, DOS attacks are a sort of nuisance. The infected PCs are manipulated to establish repeated contacts with specific websites until the servers hosting them are overwhelmed.

The recent DOS attacks, aiming the South Korean and US websites, began on July 4, 2009. A few of them are originating from unwary infected computers and all clogging several sites for consumers across the world.

Dennis Fisher, a Security Evangelist at Kaspersky Lab Americas, said - many of the attacked PCs are possibly the systems whose owners might not even know about the infection on their machines, as reported by CBCNEWS on July 10, 2009.

A computer science associate professor at the University of Virginia, said - the new cyber attacks have infected about 50,000 computers that are transmitting messages in the direction of a target server that could easily be slowed down or even completely crashed.

According to him, cyber attackers usually acquire control over systems with the help of a PC virus, similar to spam. The motivation commonly driving them is money and their focus is on gambling sites.

It appears that malware to infect the PCs has been taken down from the North Korean Internet although it does not imply that the attacks originated from there, the researchers elucidated.

Furthermore, hackers might have fabricated the attacks either for monetary gain or to acquire fame. They might have sought to disguise their malicious acts such as inserting harmful computer programs or spyware to be activated later, the analysts said.

In the meantime, the robust attacks which targeted several private and government sites emphasizes how the governments are inadequately prepared to prevent these kinds of multi-divided assaults. Consequently, the US Federal Trade Commission and the Treasury Department websites were some of the sites that were shut down.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/3/2009