WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice plans to announce charges Thursday against a North Korean spy in connection with a 2014 cyber attack Sony Pictures, according to the Washington Post.
The Post report said Justice Department officials will charge Pak Jin Hyok, who conducted hacking on behalf of North Korea’s military intelligence agency, with the Sony attack. The story cited unnamed U.S. officials.
A Justice Department spokesman said Thursday he could not comment on the story. ABC News first reported the planned charges against North Korean nationals, saying U.S. authorities have accused them of being behind the both the Sony attack and the broader WannaCry ransomware attack last year.
The Trump administration concluded last year that North Korea was responsible, but then-Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert suggested the U.S. had little recourse in the case.
“It’s not about holding a country accountable,” Bossert said last December. “We’re going to shame them for it.”
But Thursday’s planned action also reportedly includes new sanctions against North Korea, according to the Post. And the criminal charges against a North Korean government operative will surely be seen by Pyongyang as a more direct slap than Bossert’s public shaming strategy.
The 2017 WannaCry attack crippled thousands of computers around the world with software that spread among Windows computers, particularly those using older operating systems. The malware infected machines, froze them, and then demanded a $300 ransom to be paid in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
The WannaCry attack hit more than 200,000 victims in 150 countries, most notably paralyzing more than 20 percent of hospitals in the United Kingdom.
“The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible,” Bossert wrote in a December 2017 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Soon after the attack, experts at the global cyber-security firm Symantec found that earlier versions of the WannaCry ransomware were found on computers that also bore evidence of the cyber tools used against Sony Pictures Entertainment, banks in Poland and Bangladesh’s central bank. All of those attacks were linked to North Korea.
In the 2014 attack on Sony, the United States accused North Korea of the company’s computers in retaliation for the creation of a comedy titled “The Interview” that was about a C.I.A. plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
Contributing: Melanie Eversley and Jane Onyanga-Omara.
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