WannaCry?

"We believe it's important that other researchers around the world investigate these similarities and attempt to discover more facts about the origin of WannaCry."
"The scale of the Lazarus operations is shocking."
Kaspersky Internet security (Russian multinational cybersecurity) Moscow

An employee works at the Moscow headquarters of Kaspersky Labs, which specializes in antivirus and internet security software [Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters]

"We are not aware if payments have led to any data recovery."
"This was not a tool developed by the NSA to hold ransom data. This was a tool developed by culpable parties, potentially criminals or foreign nation-states, that were put together in such a way as to deliver phishing emails, put it into embedded documents, and cause infection, encryption and locking." 
Trump homeland security adviser Tom Bossert

There's an inspirational, or is it aspirational, linkage. A Russian and an American-based cybersecurity firm each appear to have concluded through their analysis that there are unmistakable clues linking the current wide-ranging "ransomware" attack on worldwide computers to a gang of cybercriminals they feel could be the signature cyberwar statement of the Peoples Republic of North Korea. If so, this is North Korea at its most ambitious; responding to the new South Korean government's tentative overture and the more strident attitude of the United States toward its dangerous mischief.

Not only is North Korea's Dear Little Leader determined to keep on firing off those Ballistic Missiles while indulging in faster, farther distances, dangling the prospect of more advanced nuclear tests on the way to perfecting a neatly powerful little warhead of the nuclear variety on what is fast becoming an arsenal of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, but indulging in the joy of perturbing the international community through mischief of an Internet-disruptive score, putting all manner of public and private interests temporarily out of commission.

But it seems that North Korean hackers simply took advantage of a tool developed elsewhere for the opposite purpose. Having accessed that tool, they simply re-purposed it to better reflect their own goal, transforming an American-security advanced tool into a North Korean formula to extract funding from agencies desperate to have their data and functionality restored so they could return to normal. Researchers appear to have linked a hacking tool originating with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that had been linked online to the current broad WannaCry attack.

Computer security experts have linked code in the WannaCry ransomware software to North Korea

Ransoming the ability of the world community to manage its resources and infrastructure and vital services, while threatening to obliterate its capacities and record-maintenance. Suddenly Kaspersky, always under suspicion in the West for its ties to the Kremlin, is handing out sage advice worldwide. Of course, this is what a global cybersecurity company is meant to do in any event, so it is merely living up to its billing. Alongside Symantec, no less.

Similarities in coding between an earlier version of WannaCry and a 2014 cyber attack from the Lazarus Group has clues both Symantec and Kaspersky  link to the identity behind this most recent cyber attack. South Korea knows all about the dauntingly disabling effects of such a strike; it experienced no less of an Internet immobilization  in 2014 with the "DarkSeoul" operation shutting down all its infrastructure. And a $81-million cyber robbery of a Bangladeshi bank further distinguished the capability of the dark forces of cyberattacks.

The Lazarus Group operation is running a "malware factory", notes Kaspersky darkly of the North Korean state actor. Thousands of additional computers fell prey to the WannaCry attack with the resumption of week-day business, affecting hospitals, businesses, schools and daily life in over a hundred countries. Computers were paralyzed in factory, bank, government agency and transport systems operations in Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, Spain, India and Japan among many others.

Experts have linked WannaCry to the Lazarus Group, a North Korean operation Credit: Bloomberg

Throughout Asia, thousands of new attacks were reported with 600 locations in Japan affected as Hitachi and Nissan Motors reported problems, while in China almost 30,000 institutions were infected through hundreds of thousands of electronic operating devices. Universities with their older computers and slow updating of operating systems and security were particularly hard hit, according to Fang Xingdong, ChinaLabs founder. And Russia too was particularly hard hit by this noxious malware.

Is there any especial irony in the fact that North Korea's only 'friend' and support has also been hit indiscriminately? China will no doubt have much to discuss with its North Korean protectorate in the near future. Even Vladimir Putin may have much to say to Pyongyang, since its most recent rocket test was an especially powerful one, plunging into the sea off the Russian coast, after ascending higher than any of its previous little surprises.

"I want to confirm that we are categorically against the expansion of the club of nuclear powers, including with the Korean Peninsula and North Korea."
"But at the same time, we understand that what we have observed in the world recently, and specifically flagrant violations of international law and incursions into the territory of foreign states, changes in regime, lead to such kinds of arms races."
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin

Oh dear, Mr. Putin! Violations of internal law and incursions into the territory of foreign states, you say?