This Russian Hacker Claims He Was Behind WannaCry, Not North Korea
TechnologyBit News Today2 min read
Konstantin Kozlovsky, an imprisoned Russian hacker, claims he helped create the WannaCry ransomware under the supervision of Russia's FSB, despite the United States attributing the attack to North Korea.
Hacker Claims US Government Misidentified Source of WannaCry
According to the Russian independent news outlet Dozhd, Kozlovsky stated that the FSB oversaw the creation of the virus. The hacker alleges it was built to specifically concentrate its efforts within large corporate networks, infecting the larger number of machines.
Russia-linked Hackers Tested WannaCry Across Major Networks
Kozlovsky says the test-run of WannaCry was conducted on the computer systems of powerful Russian corporations including Rosneft, Gazprom, Lukoil, and the largest bank in Russia, Sberbank. With only 'a single click', he said the malware could halt operations at host companies of any size in an instant.
The Russian website crimerussia.com reported that hackers also targeted Novolipetsk Steel. Reports suggest the hackers behind WannaCry planned to break into the company's network specifically, with the end goal of stopping its blast furnaces.
Kozlovsky's claims come after the US government publicly named North Korea as the perpetrator of the worldwide cyber-attack, which used a hacking tool created by the National Security Agency, EternalBlue. The tool had been stolen by hacking collective Shadow Brokers, who released it to the world in April 2017.
Kozlovsky Linked to FSB's Dokuchaev in Cyber Operations
The coordinator between Russian hackers and the FSB, at least according to Kozlovsky, was Major Dmitry Dokuchaev, employed at the FSB's Center for Information Security.
Dokuchaev was himself arrested on treason charges alongside several others, including Georgy Fomchenkov and Kaspersky Lab team member Ruslan Stoyanov, suspected among other things of transferring data on Russian hackers to U.S. intelligence services.
According to Kozlovsky, his own software, which included the malware Lurk, operated under Dokuchaev's control—a striking statement considering it was used to steal more than $50 million from Russian banks. Kozlovsky himself was arrested in 2016 in relation to the Lurk operation.
Kozlovsky's Connection to DNC Hacking
At an August 2017 court hearing, Kozlovsky admitted to hacking the DNC on FSB orders, later telling Dozhd he left his signature on the servers on a hunch and sharing a transcript of his confession on Facebook.
