Banks, exchanges hit with cyber attack? Really?

It had all the trapping of a major news event: An unprecedented cyberattack that was victimizing the likes of the NYSE Euronext, Nasdaq and top U.S. and Korean banks. Finextra reported, "South Korean intelligence officials believe North Korean or pro-Pyongyang forces are behind the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that have hit dozens of websites over the last few days. The perpetrators are understood to have used a virus to create a botnet made up of tens of thousands of infected computers, which then overloaded targeted websites with millions of requests."

The media reports were plentiful. But then the issue faded pretty quickly. The evidence for a massive attack was not exactly air tight. All in all, it looks now like a case of overhype, as noted by Minnesota Public Radio. This is not to suggest cyber-attacks are to be downplayed. They are not. 

For more:
- here's the Finextra article
- here's the article from Minnesota Public Radio

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