http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200603/kt2006031917321610220.htm By Kim Tae-gyu Staff Reporter 03-19-2006 Korean firms are running risks of being attacked by Muslim extremist hackers on occasion of the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion to Iraq that falls Monday, police said Sunday. The National Police Agency issued a warning about politically motivated cyber attacks against Korea, which is regarded as one of main enemies by some Muslim crackers due to the nation's dispatch of forces to Iraq. ``Among countries that sent troops to Iraq, Korea is thought of as one of few countries, along with the United States, which do not consider pulling out its soldiers,'' said an official at the law enforcement agency. At the request of Washington, Seoul dispatched up to 3,600 troops to Iraq in August 2004, representing the third largest foreign force after the U.S. with 155,500 and Britain with 8,500. Korea looks to substantially cut down on the number to just higher than 2,000. But the country is not considering pulling out all soldiers _ mainly construction and medical staffs _ from the war-torn Iraq. ``That appears to encourage some Muslim extremists to vandalize Korean companies' Web sites as a measure of revenge. We have intelligence regarding that,'' he said. AhnLab, Korea's foremost online security company, cautions that ``defacement,'' which means replacing the normal content of a site with a specific political or social message or erasing the content entirely, might happen Monday. ``Defacement attack is not difficult technology. Korean outfits are required to prepare for any potential (defacement) vandalizing attempts, timed with the third anniversary of the Iraqi war,'' AhnLab chief executive Kim Chul-soo said. Microsoft Korea, an affiliate here of the world's biggest producer of software, said more severe threat of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks might be on the line. DoS attackers are attempting to bring corporate networks to their knees by flooding them with useless traffic, thus shutting down the networks. ``There is a possibility that viruses are lurking in cyber space, which are programmed to activate DoS attacks on Korean sites, on the war anniversary,'' Microsoft Korea chief security officer Cho Won-young said. ``We are keeping a tab on things. In (an) emergency, our task force team will immediately convene,'' he continued. Cho worried that those who do not patch up their security holes periodically are under constant hazards of being victimized by DoS attacks. ``Big corporations are well prepared by paying much attention to security woes but small-sized ones are not. That causes concerns,'' Cho added. _________________________________ InfoSec News v2.0 - Coming Soon! http://www.infosecnews.org
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