White House Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert said Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the release of WannaCry, the malware attack that spread rapidly throughout hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries during a single week in May.
"We do not make this allegation lightly. We do this with evidence. We do so with partners," Bossert said during a White House press conference.
Victims of WannaCry included the British National Health Service, which had to turn away patients during the attacks. Other severely impacted victims included government systems in India and Russia, FedEx and the Spanish telecom Telefónica.
On Monday evening, Bossert wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal formally announcing the White House believed WannaCry was the work of North Korean actors.
At the press conference, Bossert said other nations, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Japan as well as private sector partners, including Microsoft, had agreed with the United States assessment that North Korea was behind the attack.
Bossert said that the goal of the announcement to "name and shame" the North Korean actors.
"I hope they stop acting badly online," he said, adding "If they don't, this president will act on behalf of the United States."
He did not claim to know what shape that response would take, saying the Trump administration had tried "every lever short of starving the people of North Korea to death."
Security researchers believe this group behind the WannaCry attack was a notorious North Korean hacking operation known as Lazarus.
The Lazarus group is best known for being suspected of hacking Sony Pictures in late 2014. Later, the group was tied to a series of digital bank heist utilizing the SWIFT system banks use to request transfers, as well as other attacks. Most recently, Lazarus has been tied to phishing attempts on cryptocurrency exchanges.
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