▲ This photo taken Nov. 7, 2024, shows the disrupted website of the Seoul Central District Court. (Yonhap)

(LEAD) courts-website disruptions

(LEAD) Courts' websites hit by suspected DDoS attacks

(ATTN: UPDATES with latest situation in 3rd para; REPLACES photo)

SEOUL, Nov. 7 (Yonhap) -- The websites of courts nationwide temporarily suffered service disruptions on Thursday in what appeared to be hacking attacks, judicial officials said.

The sudden network breakdowns affected only court websites providing public services, such as case searches, they said, adding there were no problems with electronic

litigation sites and the courts' internal networks.

The service disruptions gradually began to ease from 4:30 p.m., and by 6 p.m. most issues had been resolved.

The National Court Administration immediately took preemptive measures to block access to the troubled websites, suspecting that they may have been hit by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, they said.

Earlier this week, the websites of many government agencies, including the defense and environment ministries, suffered DDoS attacks, prompting authorities to look into who might have been behind the attacks.

A DDoS attack refers to a situation where a large number of infected devices are used to overwhelm a target server or website with a massive volume of traffic.

On Monday, South Korea's cybersecurity watchdog called on local organizations and businesses to increase their data protection readiness, citing rising risks of hacking attacks related to North Korea's troop dispatch to Russia.

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