Police opened a preliminary inquiry after signs emerged that the 5·18 Memorial Foundation website was hit by abnormal mass traffic immediately after it publicly criticized Starbucks Korea's "Tank Day" marketing.
The Gwangju Metropolitan Police Agency's cybercrime unit said on the 20th that it has launched a pre-booking investigation into suspected DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks targeting the 5·18 Memorial Foundation website. The move followed a request for an investigation after the foundation confirmed related signs.
According to police, around 11:30 a.m. on the previous day, signs were detected that numerous unidentified IP (internet protocol) addresses repeatedly made abnormal connections to the foundation's website, allegedly attempting to paralyze the server.
The foundation believes certain IPs repeatedly made mass connections in a short period, overloading the server.
In particular, the attempted connections were concentrated on the section of the website where the foundation posted a press release criticizing the controversy over Starbucks Korea's "Tank Day."
As multiple-connection cases continued across the website, the foundation reportedly applied rate limits to IPs accessing more than 120 times per minute and blocked some IP addresses.
The foundation said it also suffered a similar type of DDoS attack in December last year immediately after it made public its critical stance on the Dec. 12 coup.
Police have secured server log records and in-house analysis data from the website and are analyzing whether an actual DDoS attack occurred and where it originated.