Britain Blames North Korea For WannaCry Attack, Says Security Minister

Britain has laid the blame for the WannaCry ransomware attacks, which wreaked havoc on the NHS, at the doorstep of North Korea. 

Or at least that is according to security minister Ben Wallace who told BBC Radio that Britain believed “quite strongly” that the ransomware attack came from a foreign state, most likely to be North Korea. 

“North Korea was the state that we believe was involved in this worldwide attack on our systems,” he said, Reuters reports. 

WannaCry blame

“We can be as sure as possible – 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.”

The WannaCry ransomware outbreak surged across some 300,000 computers in 150 countries before a cyber security specialist figured out how it could be circumvented to enable victims to avoid the need to pay the Bitcoin ransom to regain access to their computer systems. 

In the UK, 236 NHS trusts were affected, more than a third of the trusts in England, which saw disruption of an estimated 19,000 appointments. 

Wallace noted that it was a wake up call for British organisations to shore up their cyber security defences, 

“It’s a salient lesson for us all that all of us, from individuals to governments to large organisations, have a role to play in maintaining the security of our networks,” he said, 

A report by the National Audit Office lambasted the NHS and the Department for Health for not following basic IT security protocols to prevent what it considered was a relatively unsophisticated cyber attack, 

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