SAN FRANCISCO: The Lazarus hacking group, widely believed to be connected to North Korea, is “highly likely” responsible for the WannaCry global cyberattack that hit earlier this month, 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. But 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. Banks, hospitals and state agencies were among the victims of the hackers who exploited vulnerabilities in older versions of Microsoft computer operating systems. 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.

Source: Manila Times May 23, 2017 06:11 UTC