According to the announcement on November 6 by the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, the ministry's website was attacked by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack from around 5:30 p.m. on November 5, forcing the military to investigate and take retaliatory action.

DDoS is an attack that targets websites and servers by disrupting network services. During the attack, hackers send a large amount of fake traffic to the server system, depleting the victim's resources. The consequence is that the website is inaccessible for a period of time, causing certain damage to the victim.

Also on the morning of November 6, the website of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea (JCS) also experienced unstable access.

The Cybersecurity Operations Command and other relevant agencies are checking whether other South Korean government websites were similarly attacked.

The South Korean military said it has addressed the issue and the Defense Ministry's website is now operating normally.

However, according to Yonhap, although it is possible to access the Ministry of National Defense's website, the connection speed is still slow in some areas or is suddenly disconnected many times.

“The IP address where the attack was carried out has been blocked. DDoS attacks targeting the Defense Ministry are rare,” a South Korean Defense Ministry official told Yonhap.

So far, the country's Ministry of Defense is focusing on identifying the subject that carried out the DDoS attack.

Earlier on November 1, the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA) under the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) issued a warning about cyber attack threats after information about North Korea deploying troops to Russia spread widely.

The agency also stepped up preparations for a series of security responses in case Russian hacker groups launch DDoS attacks.

From KISA's warning, Seoul officials further suspected that the attack on the Ministry of National Defense website came from Moscow or Pyongyang.

Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, Kiev has accused Moscow of launching DDoS attacks against many government and private organizations and payment services in the country.

On November 1, the General Intelligence Directorate (HUR) announced that it had launched a DDoS attack on Russian banks, paralyzing the online operations of a series of banks.