Trump's administration blames North Korea for developing WannaCry worm

Representatives of the White House at a meeting with journalists on December 19, 2017. They are officially charged with creating WannaCry North Korea



This year, WannaCry was not writing a lazy publication about the malware. Around May 2017, articles began to appear on the network that described a new kind of malicious software, a virus that attacks computers on various networks. On Geektimes such material was published on May 12. Microsoft began to attempt to solve the problem almost immediately after the appearance of the malware, but this did not help much, since not all users update the OS on their computers on time. Moreover, for the younger versions of operating systems, the situation was altogether sad, which led to the infection of 200,000 personal computers in approximately 150 countries.



The effectiveness of the malware is explained by its ability to penetrate the victims' computers through the open ports of the Server Message Block . To do this, the virus used a variety of SMB exploit, which was called "Ethernal Blue". The exploit, by the way, was developed by representatives of the NDA, and then posted on the network by the Shadow Brokers group. But who is able to create such a dangerous virus? According to the administration of the President of the United States, North Korea is to blame for what happened.



“We do not blame just like that. Our words are based on evidence. We are not the only ones who discovered this evidence. Various departments and private companies agree with us. The UK also believes that the culprits are North Korea. Microsoft also tracked the attack to the borders of this country, ”representatives of the White House said.



Actually, such statements can hardly be called a surprise. Researchers on network security and analysts (not only from the US, but also from the UK, Canada and some other countries) claim that it is the DPRK that is the source of the attack, this country has been actively working to implement its malware for several months. Bossert, a spokesman for the White House, said the investigation was thorough, the government carefully checked everything before making his statement.



“It took some time, but we did our work thoroughly, and now we believe that we have evidence of this point of view. Anilitics evaluated not only the code, but also the nature of the attack and many other trifles, ”said Bossert.



According to the US government, the attack was “cowardly and brutal,” it caused the companies in North America and many other countries to suffer losses, measured in billions of US dollars. At the same time, this country was not the only target of the attackers - they directed their efforts at infecting as many computers around the world as possible.



Interestingly, in his statement, the representative of the White House did not mention the fact that WannaCry rather quickly found a “stop crane”, which was accidentally used by one of the information security specialists from the UK, before the virus could cause significant damage. Ironically, this specialist, Markus Natchins, was arrested by the FBI. Now he is in the USA, waiting for his case to be considered (it is not related to the virus).



According to the US government, in order to defeat such a significant threat, the joint work of specialists from many countries is required. But it is the United States, Boschet is sure, should lead the "crusade" against the creators of this and other malicious programs.



In his statement, the White House representative thanked the representatives of the Facebook social network and Microsoft: “Facebook quickly neutralized the accounts infected with viruses. And Microsoft released "patches" for its security system in different operating systems. "



Representatives of the US government believe that in the fight against external cyber threat, efforts should be combined with the governments of the countries surrounding North Korea: “Mr. Trump has repeatedly demanded that North Korea stop developing the nuclear industry and missile forces. We will exert maximum pressure so that North Korea will never attack anyone. ”



Despite the fact that North Korea is now "punished" by sanctions, it still continues to develop its rocket and space industry, and some of the tests of North Koreans are quite successful.