Cyber security experts admit the technical evidence linking North Korea to the global WannaCry "ransomware" cyber attack is somewhat tenuous, but Pyongyang has the advanced cyber capabilities and the motive to compensate for lost revenue due to economic sanctions, to be considered a likely suspect.
Since Friday, the WannaCry software virus has infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries, paralyzing factories, banks, government agencies, hospitals and transportation systems across the globe.
On Monday analysts with the cyber security firms Symantec and Kaspersky Lab said some code in an earlier version of the WannaCry software had also appeared in programs used by the Lazarus Group, which has been identified by some industry experts as a North Korea-run hacking operation.
“Right now we've uncovered a couple of what we would call weak indicators or weak links between WannaCry and this group that's been previously known as Lazarus. Lazarus was behind the attacks on Sony and the Bangladesh banks for example. But these indicators are not enough to definitively say it's Lazarus at all," said Symantec Researcher Eric Chien.
