Two of them, Stardust Cholima and Labyrinth Cholima, are exclusively dedicated to monetization.
#Lazarus 2017 code#
All factions, however, share a code repository to prepare their attacks. Meyers’ team distinguishes five different factions within that umbrella, each with well-defined objectives and specialties. Lazarus is in fact the code word given to hackers operating from North Korea. Kim Jong Un directs the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Lazarus’ goal is to obtain funds to sustain a regime cornered by international sanctions,” adds the analyst from Texas. And if they make money, it is for their own benefit, like the mafias. “Other groups release ransomware, like Russia in Ukraine through Voodoo Bear, but as a cover for other purposes: they have no interest in being paid. “Lazarus is a unique case,” says Adam Meyers, chief intelligence officer for CrowdStrike and an APT expert. For this reason, governments use APTs to sabotage, spy and carry out intelligence actions without causing diplomatic spats. “APTs are basically tracked with clues provided by intelligence services and particularities of the code, but doing a good forensic analysis to determine authorship can take months,” explains hacker and cybersecurity analyst Deepak Daswani. On paper, only the secret services of the great powers, such as the US, Russia and the UK, have more power than the APTs.ĭue to the very nature of the internet, where it is easy to go undetected, it is difficult to find out who is behind a cyberattack. They are very well structured and hierarchical – they have departments and professionals with well-defined roles – and they have economic resources, which allow them to carry out complex, coordinated and fast attacks. Unofficially run and sponsored by governments, these teams are at the top of the hacker pyramid. Lazarus is a rarity in the world of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), a term used for the most sophisticated hacking groups. Making money for the LeaderĪll the money that Lazarus goes to the same recipient: the Kim Jong-un regime. Authorities also suspect that Lazarus stole around $530 million in digital tokens from the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange service Coincheck in 2018. At the time, the FBI considered it the biggest cyber heist in history. The attack was thwarted by a coding error, but not before Lazarus stole $81 million. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) was one of the largest agencies to be targeted.Ī year earlier, in 2016, Lazarus tried to steal $1 billion from the Bangladesh Central Bank by posing as bank employees to order money transfers. It is estimated that around 300,000 computers in 150 countries were paralyzed in the 2017 attack. The computer virus hijacked computers, encrypted data and demanded money to restore access. The US and the UK, as well as Microsoft, blame them for the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, the largest cyberattack in history.
Their service record is matched by very few. Cybersecurity expert Gil Shwed: ‘You can shut down water pipelines to a city from a computer’īut Lazarus are more than just a group of simple cybercriminals.
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