Attack of the North Korean zombies

As many as 26 U.S. and South Korean Web sites have been hit by thousands of zombified computers in the last two days, according to news agencies from both countries. Though the hackers responsible have not stepped forward, South Korea's intelligence service believes the widespread outages are the work of the North Korean government:

'This is not a simple attack by an individual hacker, but appears to be thoroughly planned and executed by a specific organization or on a state level,' the National Intelligence Service said in a statement, adding that it is cooperating with the American investigative authorities to investigate the attacks."

In addition to a handful of South Korean government agencies and private organizations, The New York Times claims denial-of-service attacks also affected Web sites maintained by the following:

... those of the White House, the State Department and the New York Stock Exchange ... The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points."

The implications of an attack on any country's economic infrastructure can be pretty dire. Corporations can expect as much as a five percent drop in their stock price following a cyberattack.