US says Facebook, Microsoft disabled North Korean cyber actions

Facebook Inc and Microsoft Corp acted last week to disable a number of North Korean cyber actions, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said on Tuesday as the United States publicly blamed Pyongyangfor a May cyber attack that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies.

Bossert did not provide details on those actions but said the US government was calling on companies to cooperate in cyber security defense.


"The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible," Bossert had written in a piece published on Monday night in the Wall Street Journal.

"North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade, and its malicious behavior is growing more egregious," Bossert wrote. "WannaCry was indiscriminately reckless."


The US government has assessed with a "very high level of confidence" that a hacking entity known as Lazarus Group, which works on behalf of the North Korean government, carried out the WannaCry attack, an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the government's investigation, had said.

Lazarus Group is widely believed by security researchers and US officials to have been responsible for the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment that destroyed files, leaked corporate communications online and led to the departure of several top studio executives.

North Korean has repeatedly denied responsibility for WannaCry and called other allegations about cyber attacks a smear campaign.


The accusation comes as worries mount about North Korea's hacking capabilities and its nuclear weapons program.


'PATTERN OF MISBEHAVING'

Many security researchers, including the cyber firm Symantec, as well as the British government, have already concluded that North Korea was likely behind the WannaCry attack, which quickly unfurled across the globe in May to infect more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries.


Considered unprecedented in scale at the time, WannaCry knocked British hospitals offline, forcing thousands of patients to reschedule appointments and disrupted infrastructure and businesses around the world.

The attack originally looked like a ransomware campaign, where hackers encrypt a targeted computer and demand payment to recover files. Some experts later concluded the ransom threat may have been a distraction intended to disguise a more destructive intent.


A separate but similar attack in June, known as NotPetya, hit Ukraine and other nations and caused an estimated $300 million in damages to international shipper FedEx.


Some researchers have said they believed WannaCry was deployed accidentally by North Korea as hackers were developing the code. The senior administration official declined to comment about whether U.S. intelligence was able to discern if the attack was deliberate.