WannaCry ransomware cyber-attack was ‘launched from North Korea’
According to British security officials hackers in North Korea were behind the cyber-attack which had crippled parts of the NHS and along with other organisations around the world last month.
The investigation was led by Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
According to Security sources the NCSC believes that a hacking group which is known as Lazarus had launched the attack.
US Computer Emergency Response Team has also been warned about the Lazarus.
Sony Pictures was targeted by the same group in 2014.
The Sony hack had come as the company had planned to release the movie The Interview, the move was a satire about the North Korean leadership. The movie had starred Seth Rogen. The movie was eventually given a limited release after an initial delay.
Lazarus group is also thought to have been behind the theft of money from banks.
Ransomware called WannaCry in May had swept across the world, the ransomware had locked computers and demanded payment for them to be unlocked. The NHS in the UK was particularly badly hit.
Officials in Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) began their own investigation and concluded their assessment in recent weeks.
The ransomware did not target Britain or the NHS specifically, and may well have been a money-making scheme that got out of control, particularly since the hackers do not appear to have retrieved any of the ransom money as yet.
Although the group is based in North Korea the exact role of the leadership in Pyongyang in ordering the attack is less clear.
Private sector cyber-security researchers around the world began picking apart the code to try to understand who was behind the attack soon after.
Adrian Nish, who leads the cyber threat intelligence team at BAE, saw overlaps with previous code developed by the Lazarus group.
Mr Nish says “It seems to tie back to the same code-base and the same authors, the code-overlaps are significant.”
America’s NSA had also more recently made the link of the attack to North Korea but its assessment is not thought to have been based on as deep as an investigation as the UK, partly because the US was not hit as hard by the incident.
According to the officials they have not seen any significant evidence which pointed to the exact culprit.
In 2016, North Korean hackers have been linked to money making attacks like the $81m from the central bank of Bangladesh.
This sophisticated attack involved making transfers through the Swift payment system which, in some cases, were then laundered through casinos in the Philippines.
Mr Nish says that “It was one of the biggest bank heists of all time in physical space or in cyberspace” Nish adds that further activity has been seen in banks in Poland and Mexico.
The Lazarus group is also been linked to the use of ransomware which includes an attack against a South Korean supermarket chain.
Other analysts say they saw signs of North Korea investigating the bitcoin method of payment in recent months.
The ransomware attack on May 2017 was indiscriminate rather than targeted. The spread of the ransomware was global and may have only been slowed thanks to the work of a British researcher who was able to find a “kill switch” to slow it down.
The attacks caused huge disruption in the short term but they may have also been a strategic failure for the group behind it.
Researchers at Elliptic, a UK-based company which tracks bitcoin payments, say they have seen no withdrawals out of the wallets into which money was paid, although people are still paying in to them.
Those behind the attack may not have expected it to have spread as fast as it did.
Once they realised that their behaviour was drawing global attention, the risks of moving the money may have been seen as too high given the relatively small amount involved, leaving them with little to show for their work.
The revelation of the link to North Korea will raise difficult questions about what can be done to respond or deter such behaviour in the future.
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