Smallscreen News

South Korean broadcasters reportedly under cyberattack

By April Neale Mar 20, 2013, 13:17 GMT

A photograph released by North Korea\'s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (3-R) EPA/KCNA

South Korea’s main broadcasters, KBS and MBN, and cable channel YTN, each reportedly have suffered massive network failures due to cyberattacks from undetermined origin.

Reuters, The New York Times and CNN announced the attacks based from reporters published by the Yonhap News Agency that three banks and two insurance firms reported being shut down at about 2pm local time.

Hundreds of computers at the networks were paralyzed, but they continued broadcasting normally, The NYTimes.com said. Although a key presidential official told Yonhap that it was not certain that North Korea was involved in the incident, the assumed cyberattacks come after Pyongyang’s recent threats against both the U.S and South Korea over UN sanctions following the North’s February nuclear test.

South Korea’s military also raised its state of readiness today in response. “We sent down teams to all affected sites. We are now assessing the situation. This incident is pretty massive and will take a few days to collect evidence,” a police official said, according to Reuters.