Podcast: PCs used to attack government Web sites at risk of data loss
Symantec confirms that PCs infected with the malware responsible for attacks against South Korean and U.S. government sites contain code that could erase content from the infected PCs' hard drive.
Like other distributed denial of service attacks, the actual PCs that are doing the attack are part of a "botnet." They have been infected with malicious software designed to carry out the attack. And, as CNET's Elinor Mills reported earlier, that same software could wipe out data on infected PCs.