Malware

UK Government links the WannaCry attack that crippled NHS to North Korea

UK Government blamed North Korea for the WannaCry attack that affected a third of English hospitals.

“This attack, we believe quite strongly that it came from a foreign state,” Ben Wallace, a junior minister for security, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“North Korea was the state that we believe was involved in this worldwide attack,” he said, adding that the government was “as sure as possible”.

The massive WannaCry attack infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries, including in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), the US logistics company FedEx and a factory of the car vendor Honda.

WannaCry is a ransomware which encrypts all files stored in your system and demands a $300 ransomware in worth bitcoins if you want to decrypt and recover these files.

According to the Britain’s National Audit Office, computers at 81 hospital groups across England out of the total number of 236 were infected.

The WannaCry attack caused severe problems to the NHS England, it forced the cancellation of some 19,500 medical appointments and affected roughly 600 general practitioners.

The National Audit Office confirmed that most of the affected facilities were running Windows 7 OS that had not been updated.

“It was a relatively unsophisticated attack and could have been prevented by the NHS following basic IT security best practice,” NAO chief Amyas Morse said.

“There are more sophisticated cyber threats out there than WannaCry so the Department (of Health) and the NHS need to get their act together to ensure the NHS is better protected against future attacks,”.

Unfortunately, the numerous recommendations in the NHS about cybersecurity, in particular about the security updates, were ignored.

It was a terrible lesson for the NHS, according to Dan Taylor, NHS Digital’s head of security, the organization had “learned a lot” from WannaCry attack.

Taylor defined the WannaCry attack as “an international attack on an unprecedented scale”.

The good news is that according to the NAO report affected British organizations did not pay any ransom. The UK Government is still assessing the current impact of the WannaCry attack, it still “does not know how much the disruption to services cost.”

Shortly after the WannaCry attack many security experts and firms linked the ransomware to the North Korean APT Lazarus group.

[adrotate banner=”9″] [adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – WannaCry attack, hacking)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

Recent Posts

Google addressed 2 Chrome zero-days demonstrated at Pwn2Own 2024

Google addressed two zero-day vulnerabilities in the Chrome web browser that have been demonstrated during…

10 hours ago

INC Ransom stole 3TB of data from the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland

The INC Ransom extortion group hacked the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland and is threatening…

14 hours ago

CISA adds Microsoft SharePoint bug disclosed at Pwn2Own to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds a Microsoft SharePoint vulnerability disclosed at the…

19 hours ago

The DDR Advantage: Real-Time Data Defense

This is the advantage of Data Detection and Response (DDR) for organizations aiming to build…

22 hours ago

Finnish police linked APT31 to the 2021 parliament attack

The Finnish Police attributed the attack against the parliament that occurred in March 2021 to…

1 day ago

TheMoon bot infected 40,000 devices in January and February

A new variant of TheMoon malware infected thousands of outdated small office and home office…

2 days ago

This website uses cookies.