This time they used booby-trapped Word attachments designed to run a Visual Basic script that then downloads a Trojan they call "Haobao," a name based on one of the commands used to activate it. As before, those emails used malicious attachments to hack unwitting targets. Now McAfee has found that same campaign, which they strongly believe Lazarus is behind, resumed in mid-January of this year. Earlier this month, South Korean government officials said that North Korean hackers had stolen millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from the country last year. And South Korea has been a frequent target, too: From April to October of last year, for instance, McAfee says it followed a targeted spear-phishing campaign that used fake job recruiter emails in both English and Korean with malicious attachments designed to lure targets in the finance industry and cryptocurrency exchanges, as well as military targets likely intended for espionage. The country has stolen tens of millions of dollars in bank-hacking operations from Bangladesh to Poland. The financial element of North Korea's hacking campaign has become a growing part of the global threat it represents online. 'It gives governments a way to hold an olive branch in one hand and a gun in the other.' In other words, McAfee's findings would mean the country continued its attacks weeks after Kim Jong Un reignited inter-Korean diplomacy with a declaration in his New Year's address calling for a "peaceful resolution with our southern border." McAfee confirms to WIRED that it has evidence that hacking campaign extended through January 24-and very possibly longer-and targeted South Korean victims as well as Western ones.
#North korea olympics serial#
In fact, just as the Kim regime was making nice with South Korea ahead of the Olympics games last month, it also rekindled a brazen cybercrime campaign that has stolen millions of dollars from South Korean banks and bitcoin firms.Įarlier this week, security firm McAfee published evidence that last month, the North Korean state-sponsored hacker group known as Lazarus resumed its campaign of sending phishing emails to targets around the world, designed to serve as the first step in its serial heists of financial targets. And its Stepford cheerleaders-well, some people seem to not be entirely creeped out by them.īut beneath that veneer of hockey diplomacy between the two Koreas, North Korean hackers haven't stopped targeting their Southern neighbors.
Kim's sister has led a Pyeongchang charm offensive.
Its combined hockey team with South Korea has become a global symbol of dictator Kim Jong Un's call for improved relations with the South.
For anyone getting their geopolitical news from the Olympics alone, North Korea might seem practically charismatic.
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