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Their latest attack was unusually sophisticated from a technical perspective, with new malware code added to the original Zinc software that allowed the infection to worm its way automatically from computer to computer. Once replicated, the code encrypted and locked a computer’s hard disk, then displayed a ransom ware message demanding three hundred dollars for an electronic key to recover the data. Without the key, the user’s data would remain frozen and inaccessible—forever.
The cyberattack started in the United Kingdom and Spain. Within hours it spread around the world, ultimately impacting three hundred thousand computers in more than 150 countries. Before it ran its course, the world would remember it by the name WannaCry, a malicious string of software code that not only made IT administrators want to cry but served as a disturbing wake-up call for the world.
The New York Times soon reported that the most sophisticated piece of the WannaCry code was developed by the US National Security Agency to exploit vulnerability in Windows. The NSA had likely created the code to infiltrate its adversaries’ computers. The software was apparently stolen and offered on the black market through the Shadow Brokers, an anonymous group that posts toxic code online to wreak havoc. The Shadow Brokers had made the NSA’s sophisticated weapon available to anyone who knew where to find it. While this group has not been linked definitively to a specific individual or organization, experts in the threat intelligence community suspect that it is a front for a nation state bent on disruption. This time, Zinc had added a potent ransom ware payload to the NSA code, creating a virulent cyber weapon that was ripping through the internet.
As one of our security leaders put it, “The NSA developed a rocket and the North Koreans turned it into a missile, the difference being the thing at the tip.” Essentially the United States had developed a sophisticated cyber weapon, lost control of it, and North Korea had used it to launch an attack against the entire world.
Excerpted from pages 63 to 64 of ‘Tools and Weapons’ by Brad Smith and Carol Browne