Article: "More Web attacks, North Korea Suspected."

The link: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE56709E20090709

" SEOUL (Reuters) - A fresh wave of cyber attacks that slowed U.S. and South Korean websites this week hit more targets on Thursday, a Web security firm said, while the South's spy agency has said the hacking may be linked to North Korea.

" The impact of the attacks, aimed so far at dozens of sites including the White House and the South's presidential office, was seen as negligible, experts said, but served as a reminder that Pyongyang has been planning for cyber warfare. "

I'm not an apologist for the Communist state of North Korea, and will say it could be them. But let's also face facts: It's a fairly trivial thing to obfuscate (falsify) exactly where the attack is coming from.

You can munge the IP address or go through a service that makes it impossible to track. You can bounce the attacking packets through numerous other servers, and make it appear to come from point A, while in fact it came from point Z. It's a fairly trivial thing to do - after all, script kiddies (who have no real idea of what the software they use is capable of doing) do it daily.

Granted, these attacks are certainly being carried out by more sophisticated hackers who know exactly what they're doing ... and know what steps the authorities will take in tracking them.

It certainly could be state-sponsored by North Korea. But it could also be a herd of elephants using their laptops in a Starbuck's in Montana.