According to the New York Times, researchers at cybersecurity company McAfee found that attacks in which North Korean hackers have launched on American and European banks, utilities, and oil and gas companies began in 2017 and continued through Trump’s recent meeting with the country’s autocratic leader in Hanoi. While Trump has championed his positive relationship with the dictator and North Korea has entered a period of nuclear disarmament, the country has not let up on cyber attacks against Western entities.
“For 15 months, they haven’t tested weapons because of this negotiation but over those same 15 months they have not stopped their cyber activity,” said Victor Cha, the Korea chairman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
An unnamed foreign law enforcement agency provided the McAfee researchers with access to a primary computer server on which the North Korean hackers stage their attacks. The researchers say they watched live as North Korean hackers infiltrated the computer networks of more than a hundred companies worldwide, including many in the United States.
The Times wrote that no motive is particularly clear, but the attacks with carried out with clear expertise against “engineers and executives who had broad access to their companies’ computer networks and intellectual property.”
This attack launched in 2017 is certainly not North Korea’s first rodeo when it comes to cyber attacks. In 2014, North Korean hackers went after Sony Pictures Entertainment in retaliation to a movie that mocked their leader, destroying Sony’s computer servers, halting the studio’s operations and eventually leaking many executives’ embarrassing emails. This served as a loose blueprint for the Russian hackers involved in tampering with the 2016 US presidential election.
“[North Korea’s] very aggressive cyberactivity will have to be addressed in future discussions,” said Cha, who says that cyber attacks remained are an integral element of North Korea’s general military strategy. “They’re never going to compete with the United States and South Korea soldier to soldier, tank for tank,” he said. “So they have moved to an asymmetric strategy of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and the third leg is cyber.”
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