A cyber crisis headquarter was set up by President Park Geun Hye’s government to look into whether the outage was linked to North Korea. The computer shutdowns YTN were also affected.
Professor of cyber security, Park Choon Sik, from Seoul Women’s University said that it was hard to establish immediately who was behind the attack but North Korea was ‘the usual suspect.’ He added that North Korea possibly chose cyber attacks because they were easier weapons and cost less compared to nuclear or missile attacks.
According to South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service’s spokeswoman Park Mikyung the computer disruption was noted by Cheju Bank, Shinhan Bank and Nonghyup Bank yesterday at about 2.20 p.m local time. Operations at the financial institutions were restored later on in the afternoon, without any clear indication on what caused the disruption.
