The cyber attacks that paralyzed a handful of major South Korean websites earlier this year were almost certainly carried out by North Korea or parties allied with the country, computer security company McAfee said Tuesday in a report.
The company's analysis, carried out with the help of the South Korean and U.S. governments, is one of the most thorough yet published on the March attacks, and details how they were carried out, and why they were so difficult to counter.

In investigating the incident, the report draws clear parallels with a similar attack that knocked South Korean and U.S. websites offline in 2009 and comes to an unsettling conclusion: the attacks were likely designed to test South Korea's cyber defense and response, and could be the prelude of a much larger attack in the future.

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