South Korean investigators check the Korean Broadcasting System's hardware hit by a hacking attack at the Cyber Terror Response Center of the National Police Agency in Seoul on Thursday. South Korea said it had sourced a damaging cyber attack on its broadcasters and banks to an IP address in China, fueling suspicions that North Korea may have been responsible. Photo: AFP

South Korea Thursday said North Korea is "strongly suspected" of masterminding Wednesday's cyber attacks against its broadcasters and banks, after sourcing the attacks to an Internet protocol (IP) address in China.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) announced Thursday that the incident was caused by a malicious code. A Chinese IP address (101.106.25.105) accessed the update management server of NongHyup Bank, one of three financial institutions targeted in the attacks, and generated malicious files, Seoul's Yonhap News Agency reported.

According to online IP inquiry website ipaddress.com, the IP address where the attacks allegedly originated can be traced to Internet service provider Beijing Teletron Telecom Engineering.

The company did not reply to the Global Times' interview requests by press time.

Fang Binxing, president of the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told the Global Times that the identified IP address did not directly link China to the cyber attacks because it is "very simple" for hackers to access foreign IP addresses via virtual private networks.

In response to the incident, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei Thursday also reiterated that cyber attacks are an "anonymous, transnational and deceptive" problem plaguing the world.

Recently, China's military has been under attack for the alleged hacking activities against US businesses.

Seoul pointed the finger at Pyongyang for launching Wednesday's cyber attacks, adding that the North has used Chinese IPs for past hacking campaigns.

"[The government] is closely analyzing the incident with all possibilities open, while bearing strong suspicion that North Korea conducted the attack," a high-ranking official from South Korea's presidential office told Yonhap.

North Korea has yet to issue any statement on the cyber attacks.

"Seoul believes North Korea would benefit from the move and the attacks pose no benefit for China," Fang said.

Yang Mian, a professor of international relations at the Communication University of China, told the Global Times that though North Koreans are only connected to a local area network instead of the Internet, Pyongyang has attached importance to the cultivation of IT talents.

But Yang said the South lacks evidence to back its claim Pyongyang was to blame for Wednesday's hackings.

The AP reported that the cyber attacks on South Korean banks led to long queues in front of ATMs, with one bank unable to provide customer service operations at bank windows, nor corporate banking.

Li Wei, director of the Anti-terrorism Research Center at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times that if the cyber attacks were by Pyongyang, its motivation might be to spark panic among South Koreans by disrupting the country's financial system.

The incident has stoked tension already running high on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang had earlier reacted strongly to the UN Security Council's renewed sanctions over its February 12 nuclear test and a series of US-South Korea military drills.

The North last week also accused South Korea and the US of plotting recent cyber attacks against it, fueling concerns of all-out virtual warfare.

However, Li said the current situation should not be viewed as a cyber war, given that neither the government in Pyongyang or Seoul could be linked to the attacks.

Yang predicted both sides would continue their cyberspace skirmishes, but said it is unlikely to become a flash point on the peninsula due to the low likelihood of large-scale paralysis of networks on either side.

North Korea on Thursday threatened strikes on US military bases in Japan and Guam.

"The US should not forget that the Andersen base on Guam where B-52s take off and naval bases on the Japanese mainland and Okinawa, where nuclear-powered submarines are launched, are all within the range of our precision target assets," a spokesman for the Korean People's Army said.

North Korea also issued air raid alerts as part of a one-hour civil defense drill on Thursday.

Agencies contributed to this story