There are few apparent reasons - the dominance of the Windows OS in Korea, anecdotal lack of interest in cybersecurity, and state-of-the-art Internet infrastructure make Korea a top choice for cybercriminals. The numbers showing Korea as one of the top producers of Internet threats is not due to Koreans’ bad manners or nature. In fact, most of the attacks originating from Korea are not even caused by Koreans - instead, criminals from all over the world target Korean computers and try to create zombie networks with Korean computers just because they are guaranteed high throughput and efficiency of their attacks.

Because roughly 14 million of the nation’s 15.5 households are connected to always-on high-speed Internet, Korea makes a prime target for virus and worm viruses. The Korean government even plans to increase the speed of the Internet to 100 megabits per second by 2010, about 50 times faster than the current speed.

The February 6, 2007 DDoS attack on critical DNS servers was attributed partially to a large number of Korean computers. Attackers tried to bring the Internet infrastructure by using zombie computers with high-speed Internet connection to send a flood of packets. The February 6, 2007 attacks were largely unsuccessful but it shows that in the future, with a larger number of PCs connected to a faster Internet service, such attacks may be successful.

Korea has done a great job in creating an exemplary Internet infrastructure and has achieved the highest broadband penetration in the world. But with success comes responsibility, and the Korean government should take steps to educate and protect technologically the network they have created.

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Last update : 17-06-2007 20:03