The Lazarus hacking group, widely believed to be connected to North Korea, is “highly likely” responsible for the WannaCry global cyberattack that hit on May 12, US anti-virus firm Symantec said.
North Korea has angrily dismissed earlier reports linking its isolated regime to the worm that crippled hundreds of thousands of computers, demanding payment in Bitcoin to return control to users.
However, Symantec said the ransomware had many of the hallmarks of other Lazarus attacks, including the 2014 strike on Sony Pictures and a multimillion-dollar theft from the Bangladesh Central Bank.
Without mentioning the group’s links to North Korea, it said that prior to the global outbreak, an earlier version of WannaCry was used in a small number of attacks in the previous three months.
“Analysis ... revealed substantial commonalities in the tools, techniques, and infrastructure used by the attackers and those seen in previous Lazarus attacks, making it highly likely that Lazarus was behind the spread of WannaCry,” the company said.
Up to 300,000 computers in 150 nations were hit by the WannaCry worm, which seizes systems and demands payment in Bitcoin to return control to users.
Banks, hospitals and state agencies were among the victims of the hackers who exploited vulnerabilities in older versions of Microsoft computer operating systems.
The North last week vehemently denied the claims, notably, but not exclusively advanced by South Korean experts, and hit back to accuse its opponents of spreading propaganda.
The North appears to have stepped up cyberattacks in recent years in a bid to earn hard foreign currency in the face of UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear and missile programs, experts said.
Despite the links to Lazarus, “the WannaCry attacks do not bear the hallmarks of a nation-state campaign, but are more typical of a cybercrime campaign,” Symantec said.
In November 2014, Sony Pictures Entertainment became the target of the biggest cyberattack in US corporate history, linked to its release of North Korea satire The Interview.
Washington blamed Pyongyang for the attack, a claim it denied — although it had strongly condemned the film, which features a fictional CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
Seoul Internet security firm Hauri, known for its vast troves of data on Pyongyang’s hacking activities, has been warning of ransomware attacks since last year.
Researchers in the US, Russia and Israel have also pointed to a potential North Korean link — but it is notoriously hard to attribute cyberattacks.
Google researcher Neel Mehta has also shown similarities between WannaCry and code used by the Lazarus hacking group, widely believed to be connected to Pyongyang.
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