Even as Guccifer goes on a tear, releasing Hova’s credit reports and Hillary Clinton’s emails, our friends in South Korea are having some computer problems of their own. Earlier today (in the middle of the afternoon, Seoul-time), computer networks at two of the country’s banks and three TV stations shut down out of the blue, in what looks like the work of a malicious virus. That’ll ruin an IT Department’s day, all right.
“Staff at the three broadcasters said their computers crashed and could not be restarted, with screens simply displaying an error message, although they have continued to make television broadcasts, our correspondent said.
There were also reports of skulls popping up on some computer screens, which could indicate that hackers had installed malicious code in the networks, the Korean Internet Security Agency said.”
A Defense spokesman told the BBC it was too early to point fingers: “We do not rule out the possibility of North Korea being involved, but it’s premature to say so.” (Just last week, actually, North Korea accused the U.S. of attacking its very, very limited Internet capabilities.) The Guardian says:
“Warnings reportedly appeared on some computer screens from a previously unknown group calling itself the ‘WhoisTeam’, showing skulls and a message stating it was only the beginning of ‘our movement’.”
But South Korea’s rowdy northern neighbor is blamed for attacks in 2009 and 2011 and tensions are running high right now, so we’re just surprised the hack didn’t look like this:
