Mystery of the July 4th hack attacks

As experts begin unraveling the cause of the July 4th hack attacks, evidence is surfacing that they may not have come from North Korea, as widely believed. One investigation by Bkis Security disclosed that nearly 170,000 botted PCs from 74 countries were used in the attacks. They also discovered that commands were routed through eight control services, tied to a master server located in the United Kingdom.

This discovery makes the investigation even more complicated because while it may be easy to lay the blame on the North Koreans, there simply is not enough concrete evidence to show they are the culprits. Jayson E. Street, a cyber warfare consultant at security firm Netragard, tells USA Today that the master service could be located in the U.K., but that doesn't mean that it is U.K. based. It also could mean the hackers were smart enough to purposely lay the blame on North Korea, which he believes doesn't have the know-how to carry out this kind of attack.

All of this information could leave U.S. government cyber sleuths at a loss over how to proceed to prevent the next attack. We hope they are working very hard on this issue and losing some sleep over it, too. After all, what happens next time? More important, how do we prevent it?

For more on the July 4^th hack attack:
- check out this USA Today article