The U.S. Government has recently concluded the federal court case against North Korean computer programmer, Park Jin Hyok, who is responsible for numerous high profile cyber attacks and heists. Hyok, who is believed to be living in North Korea and is apart of North Korean-sponsored hacking organization, is responsible for the damaging Sony hack that occurred in November of 2014, the Bangladesh bank heist in February of 2016, and the Wannacry ransomware attack in May of 2017.
In addition to leak of entertainment films like Annie and Fury, which cost Sony roughly tens of millions of dollar, the Sony hack of 2014, which Park Jin Hyok is responsible for, exposed sensitive personal information about employees, including Social Security numbers, financial records, salary information, as well as embarrassing emails among top executives. U.S. officials believe the hack on Sony was in retribution for the release of the Seth Rogan and James Franco film, “The Interview”, which although a comedy, the plot of the film was to assassinate Kim Jong Un.
Park Jin Hyok was later connected to the cyber heist on the Bangladesh Bank, which resulted in a robbery of millions of dollars from banks around the globe. Although there is no direct trace, Park and his associates potentially walked away with roughly $60 million dollars (roughly $40 million was recovered from the $101 million that was successfully stolen). The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was able to block 35 transactions that would have accounted for more than $800 million dollars.
Lastly, security researchers were able to connect Park Jin Hyok to the global WannaCry Ransomware attack that occurred in 2017 after they were able to trace the same code as the malware that was previously distributed by the hacker group known as the Lazarus Group, which is believed to be responsible for the Sony hack. All in all, the WannaCry cyber attack used malware to scramble data on hundreds of thousands of computers at hospitals, factories, government agencies, banks and other businesses across the globe.
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If you’d like to read more about this high profile cybercriminal and the cyber attacks he is associated to, click here.