North Korea was originally a prime suspect for launching the cyber attacks, but the isolated state was not named on a list of five countries where the attacks may have originated, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said.

The attacks targeting dozens of government and business sites in South Korea and the United States did not cause major damage or security breaches, experts said, but the KCC warned a new phase at 1500 GMT on Friday could cause severe damage to PCs.

Leading South Korean web security firm Ahnlab, which has closely examined the attacks, said the new phase would target data on tens of thousands of infected personal computers.
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“The affected computers will not be able to boot and their storage files will be disabled,” said Lee Byung-cheol of Ahnlab.