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The cyber attacks on U.S. and foreign government Web sites over the July 4 holiday actually began a week or more ago, a Pentagon source confirmed to Fox News on Wednesday. North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces committed the cyber attacks, paralyzing major U.S. and South Korean Web sites, aides to two lawmakers told the Associated Press today.

In the United States, the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all paralyzed at numerous points over the holiday weekend and into this week, American officials inside and outside the government told the Associated Press on Wednesday. The officials spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the issue.

The sites of 11 South Korean organizations, including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, according to the state-run Korea Information Security Agency. Agency spokeswoman Ahn Jeong-eun told the Associated Press 11 U.S. sites suffered similar problems.

Other sources familiar with the U.S. outage – which is called a denial of service attack –  said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and high-level attack.

However, as the upshot of these violations remains indeterminate, the financial effects of such attacks are potentially staggering.

The Congressional Research Service has released an estimate showing the yearly economic impact of cyber attacks on businesses has grown to over $226 billion, according to a report from the Technolytics Institute based in Pennsylvania.

Further, the Cisco report said vulnerabilities in virtualization technology nearly tripled from 35 to 103 year over year, and attacks are becoming increasingly blended and cross-vector.

Patrick Peterson, a Cisco (News - Alert) fellow and chief security researcher told TMC’s (News - Alert) Michael Dinan that cyber-criminals now are blending e-mail and the Web to attack specific entities, such as smaller credit unions and universities.

“The sophistication is mind-boggling,” Peterson said. “It’s impossible to imagine that criminal enterprises can do this kind of sophistication.”

As TMCnet also reported, experts say that the increasingly popularity of mobile devices that are Internet-ready, such as the Apple (News - Alert) iPhone (News - Alert) or BlackBerry smartphones, also are increasing security threats.