Thanks to the technology advancement all of us have become heavily dependent on same. However along with increase dependency we have also become extremely vulnerable and susceptible to various malicious attacks. Over the years, the rate of cybercrime across the globe has multiplied by manifold. The latest cyberattack that has gripped the entire globe is “Wannacry and Ransomware”. This ransomware attack has spread to as many as 150 countries over the last few days.
WannaCry May Has Its Roots in North Korea
A google employee of Indian Origin called Neel Mehta has pointed on Twitter that the hackers might have roots to north Korea. He has gone on to say that a North Korean group called “Lazarus Group” might be behind this worldwide cyber terror. He claims that the group had used a similar nature of coding tools called “wannacrypt “as used in the recent cyber-attack. MR Mehta is an alumni of the prestigious University of British Columbia, he claims to have exposed the “Lazarus Group” by posting “codes” on Twitter and pointing out the similarity between “wannacrypt” and ransomware attacks. The recent attacks have targeted companies, government organizations, multinationals, financial institutions, hospitals and so on.
Altaf Halde who is the Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab in Southern part of Asia claims that he has done research on the codes and analysed the information when he drew the conclusion confirming his doubt that there are glaring similarities between the malware sample and the “Lazarus Group” attack in the year 2015. Mr. Mehta’s discovery that the 2015 and 2017 cyber-attack codes are similar in nature has helped people identify the root of the problem.
Hints Indicate Lazarus Group’s Involvement
In the year 2014, Neel Mehta had introduced a security mechanism called “Heartbleed”. It was a bug that affected various online stores, social networking sites and websites. It gave access to pivotal financial information about the company or store to the hackers making the sites vulnerable. According to Mr. Mehta this “Lazarus Group” was behind the hack of Sony Pictures in the year 2014 and it also attacked a Bangladesh based banking system in 2016.
The Kaspersky Lab is quick to add that though all fingers point to “Lazarus Group” as the origin behind this ransomware, people cannot be 100 % sure unless more research is done on this subject. Before coming to any kind of conclusion, it is important that researchers from across the globe do their bit of research and affirm the believe.
The “Lazarus group “had admitted that they were behind the 2014 Sony Pictures fiasco.However, there might be a probability that a group of new hackers who are aware of the “wannacrypt“codes have deliberately used a replica of the same in “ransomware “, so that all fingers point towards North Korea and the true identity of the hackers remain hidden forever.Also, some people also believe that though “Lazarus Group’ is in North Korea they might not be acting in accordance with the instructions of the North Korean government.
Only, time will unfold the truth in future.