Q COSTA RICA – North Korea’s hacking operations are growing and getting more bold, increasingly targeting financial institutions worldwide, now linked to attacks on banks in 18 countries, including Costa Rica.
According to a new report from Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky, the same hacking operation (cyber-heists) – known as “Lazarus” – attempted on financial institutions in Bangladesh, Ecuador, the Philippines and Vietnam also attacked financial institutions in Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Poland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Uruguay.
Kaspersky researchers say the hackers can be traced back to North Korea.
To hide their location, Kaspersky says the Lazarus hackers carefully routed their signal through France, South Korea and Taiwan to set up that attack server.
“But there was apparently one mistake spotted by Kaspersky: A connection that briefly came from North Korea,” reports CNN. “North Korea is a very important part of this equation,” said Vitaly Kamluk, who leads Kaspersky’s Asia-Pacific research team.
The Q was not able to confirm if Costa Rica’s financial institutions were actually attacked, and if so, to what extent.
Emails to the Ministry of Finance (Ministerio de Hacienda) have gone unanswered.
Source: CNN
