July cyber attacks blamed on North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Remember those cyberattacks that crippled parts of the Word Wide Web in the United States and South Korea back in July? A series of news reports are blaming the attacks on the North Korean government. The reports quote the head of South Korea’s main spy agency as telling lawmakers that the IP address that triggered the Web attacks has been traced back to North Korea’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. And the official says the North Korean agency leased the IP address from China. The July attacks caused outages on prominent government-run sites in the U.S. and South Korea. Affected sites include those of the White House and the South’s presidential Blue House. North Korea immediately was suspected of involvement in the attacks but there has been little concrete evidence.