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A spate of cyber attacks on US and Korean websites that has affected everything from the White House to banks could enter a new phase today, experts warned.
But original theories that the co-ordinated attacks had been launched by communist North Korea have been dismissed after its neighbouring Korea Communications Commission said it had traced the sources to 16 countries, including Germany, Austria, the US, Georgia and South Korea.
The attacks, which have targeted dozens of websites in the US and South Korea, have as yet caused no major damage or major security breaches but the KCC warned that a new phase of attack this afternoon could cause much more serious damage.
Up until now the attacks have forced websites into overload, creating a so-called "service-denial" situation. A virus smuggled into thousands of PCs across the globe causes them all to trigger at the same time and attempt to contact a single specific website, often forcing it to shut down or run very slowly.
Now it is feared that the infected computers could have their hard disks wiped, be unable to reboot or have data storage systems disabled.
Although North Korea was not on South Korea's list of the sources of the attacks the rogue state is still seen as a likely source of the original virus.
Few people have access to the internet in North Korea but its leader Kim Jong-il is widely believed to have created a cyber warfare unit several years ago.
But other analysts suggest the attacks are simply being run by a group of hackers. Such prank attacks happen "millions of times a day" said a US government official.
