A group of hackers famously known as New World Hackers (NWH) is claiming to attack a number of state websites in North Korea.
The group is associated with the infamous hacktivists collective Anonymous and the cyber attack seems to be prompted by the recent satellite launch from North Korea.
NWH shut down three websites merely hours after the launch took place this Sunday. However, the group claims that it has managed to affect up to 200 websites with the attacks. The targeted sites belonged to Korea News Service (KNS) but hackers claim “these sites are definitely linked to the satellite.”
NWH is the same group who shut down HSBC bank and Donald Trump websites.
According to a member of the group, their main motive behind these attacks “was to stop communications between the satellite and the websites, leaving the government wondering why they can’t launch a test or possibly even a real missile strike at any point in time.”
“If you attack a site linked to a satellite that constantly updates off of that site, you’re really disrupting something somewhere. We, at least, slowed down their progress.”
As of now, it is unclear whether the communications with the satellite was affected due to the attacks or not. Nonetheless, it has been proven that the websites were knocked offline when the attackers launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
DDoS attack is a method in which the servers, which are responsible for hosting websites, are overloaded with multiple sources.
https://t.co/mRVlekAGQg
knca.kp#TangoDown
Reason: Illegally launched a satellite into space with the capibility of it being used for war.— New World Hackers (@NewWorldHacking) February 8, 2016
Earlier in December 2015, New World Hackers conducted the biggest DDoS attack ever in which they used the “BangStresser” tool to disable all websites of the BBC for several hours.
Also, the same group disrupted so-called Islamic State’s websites during Anonymous’ OpISIS campaign using this tool. The hackers maintain that although the group participates in certain operations launched by Anonymous and fully supports the hacktivists collective, they operate independently of Anonymous.
North Korean launched the satellite amidst a lot of suspicion and criticism. The country defended this step but stating that the satellite has been launched for tracking weather patterns. But, the US and other countries believe that the launch is actually a ballistic missile test.
At the time of publishing this article, all targeted sites were down.