In the latest addition to the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the Korean peninsula, a cyber attack on South Korea, and originally attributed to North Korea, was actually originated from an IP address located in China.
South Korea's Communications Commission claimed that the Wednesday attack damaged 32,000 computers and servers at media and financial companies. Malicious software, otherwise known as malware, was used to infect the computer networks of banks and broadcasters. Many of their networks were either slowed down or completely shut off.
At first, it was believed that North Korea was to blame because of their continued hostile rhetoric towards their neighbor to the south. In the past few weeks tensions have risen rapidly over North Korea's nuclear weapons efforts and missile testing.
Up to this point, the rest of the international community has almost unilaterally denounced the actions of leadership in Pyongyang, with historical all China even showing signs of irritation at their continued aggressive behavior.
Perhaps that is what makes this cyber attack so confusing. If member of China's government were responsible for this shutdown of communications in South Korea, than china has been very misleading in their objectives regarding the Korean peninsula. A couple of weeks prior to this incident the United States and China settled on sanction that would limit North Korea's ability to purchase luxury items and make cash transfers.
There is plenty of reason to assume that this has little to do with the Chinese government, however. Chinese has little to gain by jeopardizing stable relations in an Eastern economy it dominates. Furthermore, as Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei points out, computer hacking often has little to do with the country of origin.
"We have pointed out many times that hacking is a global issue. It is anonymous and transnational. Hackers would often use IP addresses from other countries to launch cyberattacks."
For this reason, North Korea is still viewed as a probable culprit in the attack. They have also been in the news lately for accusing South Korea of working with the United States to perform "persistent and intensive virus attacks" against the North. Officials in Pyongyang are convinced that South Korea is a "puppet regime" for the United States and it is this belief that has fueled much of the tension now boiling over in Korea.
