Britain says North Korea was behind cyberattack on health service

Britain believes “quite strongly” that North Korea was behind the “WannaCry” cyberattack in May that wreaked havoc on the National Health Service’s computer systems and spread to more than 150 countries, a senior official said on Friday. The minister of security, Ben Wallace, told the BBC that several other countries had concluded the same thing: North Korea unleashed “ransomware” that buffeted institutions including universities in China, rail systems in Germany and the Russian Interior Ministry.
“This attack, we believe quite strongly, came from a foreign state,” he said. “North Korea was the state that we believe was involved this worldwide attack.”
Mr. Wallace declined to elaborate on the evidence that had led to the conclusion. “I can’t obviously go into the detailed intelligence, but it is widely believed in the community and across a number of countries that North Korea had taken this role,” he said.
The cyberattack on May 12, which struck thousands of computers around the word, was the largest ever to hit the N.H.S. The cyberattackers exploited gaps in the security of Windows XP to send malicious software by email that locked users out of their computer systems.
They encrypted the information on them and then demanded payment of $300 or more in Bitcoin to unlock the devices. In Britain, the attack resulted in the abrupt cancellation of patients’ operations and delays in medical appointments at dozens of hospitals that struggled to retrieve essential medical information and patient histories.