South Korea’s police are investigating a suspected cyber attack on the country’s major broadcasters and two large banks, police officials have said.
At least three major broadcasters were affected as well as Shinhan Bank, Part of Shinhan Financial Group, two financial institutions, the police and government said on Wednesday.
They did not comment on the possible causes of the outages.
Shinhan Bank, one of the banks affected, regained control of its computer network later on Wednesday, bank officials said.
A spokesman at LG Uplus said the company believes its network was attacked.
The firm provides internet-related services to the broadcasters and the banks which are suffering from the outages.
Initial speculation centred on a potential hacking attack by North Korea, which has hacked South Korean institutions before, but the police and South Korean government said they could not yet ascertain the cause of the outages.
South Korea’s army raised its alert level raised after the suspected cyber attack.
