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Expert finds more North Korea links in ransomware attack

FILE - In this Wednesday, April 22, 2015, file photo, Stijn Vanveerdeghem, left, an engineer with Cisco, shows graphics with live wireless traffic to FedEx employee Barry Poole during the RSA Conference in San Francisco, where threat analysts, security vendors and corporate IT administrators gathered to talk about malicious software, spear-phishing and other attacks that can steal money or secrets from companies and consumers. As the Friday, May 12, 2017, global cyberextortion attack that held people’s computer files hostage slows, authorities are working to catch the crooks behind it, which is a difficult task that involves searching for digital clues and following the money. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File) FILE - In this Wednesday, April 22, 2015, file photo, Stijn Vanveerdeghem, left, an engineer with Cisco, shows graphics with live wireless traffic to FedEx employee Barry Poole during the RSA Conference in San Francisco, where threat analysts, security vendors and corporate IT administrators gathered to talk about malicious software, spear-phishing and other attacks that can steal money or secrets from companies and consumers. As the Friday, May 12, 2017, global cyberextortion attack that held people’s computer files hostage slows, authorities are working to catch the crooks behind it, which is a difficult task that involves searching for digital clues and following the money. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

By Associated Press May 16, 2017 1 min read

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – A South Korean cyber security expert says there is more circumstantial evidence that North Korea may be behind the global “ransomware” attack: the way hackers took computers hostage was similar to previous cyberattacks attributed to North Korea.

Simon Choi, a director at anti-virus software company Hauri Inc., said Tuesday that North Korea is no newcomer in the world of Bitcoin and it has been mining Bitcoin using malicious computer programs as early as 2013.

Last year, Choi accidentally spoke to a hacker traced to a Pyongyang internet address about development of ransomware and he alerted South Korean authorities.

Researchers at Symantec and Kaspersky Lab also found similarities between WannaCry malware in the latest cyberattack and previous attacks blamed on North Korea.