A top cyber-security expert firm has investigated the theory of North Korean hackers being linked to the attacks on banks in recent months.
But it’s more than questionable that N.Korea has the skill or knowledge for that kind of attacks. Even the photos and videos showing N.Korean soldiers and people sitting in front of PCs (most of the time just watching the Monitor screen without even moving the mouse or touching the keyboard) are staged, that you can read on many blogs of people who actually visited N.Korea, or see on any documentaries about N.Korea.
The large cyber-security firm, Symantec, has stated that they have strong evidence that the same group that is held responsible for the attempt of stealing money from the banks inside of the Philippines, is possibly using the same rare malware that was deployed in the large ‘Hacking of Sony Pictures’ in 2014.
The United States Government has stated that North Korea was, in fact, behind the Sony hack attack.
However, if North Korea is to be found to be the one behind the bank attacks, this would then be the first time that a country has been detected for stealing money from cyber-attacks.
During February, the hackers were responsible for stealing $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh alone. Also, according to Symantec, this was also the same group that had previously attempted to steal $1 million from the Tien Phong Bank located within Vietnam. But our investigation lead to the conclusion that The Federal Reserve of New York Just Gave Away a Developing Nation’s $80 Million to a Few Casinos
In addition to this mess, the code also shares some similarities alongside the malware that was utilized by the group known as Lazarus, who also have been accused of various attacks against the United States and North Korea, including the Sony Pictures Entertainment attacks.
While being online, it is rather difficult to know if someone is an Alien from Mars, or an actual person. It is also common for online criminals to take an attack code from other groups, then altering it for their own malign purposes for a specific attack, or attacks. Hacking groups do this to aid in covering their tracks, and due to the fact it worked well against another target, the same effect may also provide to be useful for them, as well.
However, the code-sharing is less than true whenever it pertains to the nation-state cyber-attacks, which is exactly why some of the security firms will also name those that they fully believe are behind the relatively rare intrusions. Typically speaking, when the code has in fact been utilized, in order to target the bank networks, they then proceed to chase those large amounts of financial gain. This becomes an issue, as it is rather difficult to confirm due to the fact that the code is code, and when it is once widely disseminated online, it then becomes much harder to figure out who the culprit behind the keyboard(s) are.
Sources: BBC.
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