A research carried out by ‘McAfee’ states that North Korea is in an intention to launch global cyber attacks of severe scale via Operation Ghost Secret. The research said that the attack campaign has targeted 17 countries so far including the United States and has focused on stealing military secrets and cyber provocations.
McAfee LLC says that hackers from Pyongyang started the cyberattack campaign on March 14 and it went to March 26 targeting various infrastructures which include IT assets of healthcare organizations, higher education, telecommunications, and power companies. Though the cyber security firm did not name any of the companies, it did specify that the attacks were mostly from Asia-Pacific region.
Readers of Cybersecurity Insiders have to notify a fact over here that currently North Korea is stung by various sanctions from western countries and is trying its best to overcome the situation.
Perhaps taking the help of cyber warriors in crippling the critical infrastructure of enemy nations seems to be the objective of Kim Jong Un for now.
McAfee feels that Operation Ghost secret could be the work of North Korea linked Hacking group named Lazarus based on similarities in malware spread and infrastructure.
In one of its statements issued to Wall Street Journal, McAfee confirmed that North Korea was behind the attack on Turkish Bank last year and could launch similar attacks on financial entities of western countries in near future.