FOUND
A total of 304 people died when the Sewol sank on April 16, 2014, touching off an outpouring of national grief and soul searching in South Korea about long-ignored public safety and regulatory failures. Public outrage over what was widely seen as a botched rescue NORTH KOREA
Several sets of investigators reported tentative findings that suggest hackers linked to North Korea might have been involved with WannaCry. But they could all be drawing conclusions from a very small set of clues.
On Monday, the Russian security firm, Kaspersky Lab, said portions of the WannaCry programme used the same code as malware distributed by the Lazarus Group, a hacker collective behind the 2014 Sony hack.
Another security company, Symantec, related the same findings, which it characterised as intriguing but “weak” associations, since the code could have been copied from the Lazarus malware.
Two law enforcement officials likewise said US investigators suspected North Korea, based on code similarities; the officials called that finding preliminary. effort by the government contributed to the ouster of former President Park Geun-hye, who was removed from office and arrested in March over broad corruption charges.
Divers recovered 295 bodies from the ship’s wreckage and nearby seas before the government stopped underwater searches after seven months.
In March, salvage workers completed a Herculean effort to raise the 6,800-tonne ferry from waters off the country’s southwest coast and tow it to port in Mokpo, where investigators continue to search the wreckage.
In recent days, they reported the discovery of suspected human bones that they put up for DNA testing.
The Oceans and Fisheries Ministry said Koh’s bone was not
But WannaCry remained a puzzle, in part because some of its elements seemed amateurish.
Salim Neino, CEO of the Los Angeles-based security firm Kryptos Logic, said the WannaCry worm was “poorly designed” — patched together and consisting of a “sum of different parts” with an unsophisticated payment system.
DIGGING OUT
One of the organisations hardest hit by WannaCry — the United Kingdom’s National Health Service — appeared to be recovering. Last Friday, many NHS hospitals turned away patients after WannaCry locked up computers, forcing the closure of wards and emergency rooms.
NHS Digital, the body that oversees cybersecurity in Britain’s health system, told hospitals to disconnect all infected computers, apply a Microsoft found in the wreckage, but by divers who were searching waters where the ferry was raised from.
Koh’s wife, Yoo Baek-hyeong, emotionally reacted in March after the ferry was raised and put on a transport vessel for what became a week-long journey to Mokpo.
“He was in the dark and frightening deep seas for three years, but he’s now going to Mokpo,” Yoo said then.
“I want to find even just a piece of his hair. He would be wearing his wedding ring . ... I want to find all of those things.”
The ferry’s captain survived and is serving a life sentence after a court found him guilty of committing homicide through “willful negligence” because he fled the ship without issuing an evacuation order. AP patch that closed the vulnerability, then “roll back” the infected computers and restore them from backed-up files.
SIGN OF HACKS TO COME
WannaCry could serve as a kind of template for future cyberattacks. Neino of Kryptos Logic, for instance, said the leak of the NSA hacking tools had significantly narrowed the gap between nations and individuals or cyber gangs.
“The concern has always been, when are the real bad guys, the ones that don’t care about rules of engagement, the ones who are really out to hurt us, will they become cyber-capable?” he said on Monday night.
“I think we found out that those who really want to hurt us have begun to, because they became cyber-capable the moment that the NSA cybertools were released.” AP