Actor Randall Park playing Kim Jong-Un in the Sony Pictures movie The Interview—a movie hackers didn’t leak.
Sony Pictures Entertainment
In a presentation planned for noon Eastern time today, the Justice Department will announce the indictment of North Korean agents for both the theft of data and “wiper” attack on Sony Pictures in 2014 and the worldwide “WannaCry” malware attack of May, 2017. The indictments, reported by ABC News and the Washington Post, are the first direct charges against individuals associated with the North Korean government.
One of the individuals, identified by the Post as Pak Jin Hyok, conducted the Sony Pictures attack under orders from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s clandestine military intelligence agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the indictment alleges. The RGB is the agency that oversees Bureau 121, North Korea’s cyber warfare agency.
Pak is alleged to be linked to the Lazarus Group—the malware and hacking group that has been previously connected by US intelligence and private sector security researchers to the Sony attack, the attempted theft of $1 billion from Bangladesh Bank through the SWIFT system, and the WannaCry malware. The group is also deemed to be behind denial-of-service attacks against the government, banks, and media companies in South Korea.
Ars will update this story as more details become available.
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