hankyoreh

By Park Hyun-chul and Um Ji-won, staff reporters

Right wing website Ilgan Best Jeojangso (Daily Best Storehouse: Ilbe) suffered connectivity issues after being the target of a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack. Analysts suspect that Ilbe may have been attacked by Anonymous, the international hacker organization that hacked Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean propaganda website directed at South Korea. When Anonymous published the list of members of the website, members of Ilbe condemned the act as wanton dissemination of personal information.

The Ilbe website was subjected to a DDOS attack from late on Apr. 7 until 5am on Apr. 8. On the night of Apr. 7, the Webmaster of Ilbe said on Twitter, “A DDOS attack started shortly before, which is making it difficult to connect to the website. We are hard at work to restore the site and get it running again quickly.” Normal access to the website was not restored until the afternoon of Apr. 8.

Some observers think that the DDOS attack on Ilbe was carried out by Anonymous.

On the night of Apr. 7, a tweet by Anonymous Korea (@Anonsj) read, “There’s a rumor going around that Anonymous is attacking Ilbe. I would say that it is certainly possible that Anonymous is behind the attack. This afternoon, members of Ilbe came into the Anonymous IRC chatroom and caused trouble. The IRC admins said, ‘If you don’t stop, we will attack Korea.’”

Ilbe members entered the chatroom used by Anonymous hackers and stirred them up, using insulting language and flooding the chatroom with repeated text, the tweet said.

“We did not hack with the intention of hunting down pro-North Korean organizations,” Anonymous Korea said about their hacking of Uriminzokkiri. “Our intention was to send a warning to the regime of Kim Jong-un.” The comments indicate a feeling of discomfort that Anonymous’s decision to publish the list resulted in the disclosure of the personal information of Ilbe users.

On the afternoon of Apr. 8, Anonymous Korea claimed on its Twitter account that it was not involved with the denial of service at Ilbe.

The relationship between Anonymous Korea and Anonymous remains ambiguous. Not only are there multiple Twitter accounts that call themselves “Anonymous Korea,” but there are also those who say it is unlikely that an international hacker organization that opposes the standing order of countries and espouses political neutrality would use a district name with national associations.

Reports show that Anonymous opposes censorship in countries around the world and proclaims its goals to be freedom of expression and the free movement of information, and that the anonymous members of the organization operate independently.

Anonymous first gained notoriety in 2010 with its attack on the US financial institutions that cut off funding for WikiLeaks. It also attacked the websites of the Egyptian and Syrian governments, which had used military force to crush pro-democracy demonstrations.

In an interview with the press, the person behind Anonymous Korea said, “We will launch a further attack on the North Korean computer network on Jun. 25.” [Jun. 25 is the anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War.] This person also promised a cyber attack on North Korean nuclear facilities.

On Apr. 7, Anonymous hackers with pro-Palestinian leanings struck the Israel government. Apr. 7 is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

These hackers criticized the fact that Israel carried out air strikes on the Gaza Strip on Apr. 2 despite having signed a ceasefire agreement with Palestinian armed faction Hamas three months prior. Anonymous also promised to carry out a large-scale cyber assault called Opisrael. The government of Israel said that, while a number of government ministry websites had been the target of a DDOS attack on the afternoon of Apr. 2, all the attacks had been fought off, with only a few sites suffering minor damage.

Israel also was hit with about 4,400 cyber attacks in Nov. 2012 when it was conducting heavy bombing in the Gaza Strip. These attacks brought down the websites of key government ministries.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]