Re:The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea
by abeyer on Thursday June 15, 2017 @04:02AM
(#14558654)
The quote, with the words you elided was:
> that only a domain expert with highly specialized experience could even recognize
Notably, it's about the expertise needed to recognize and identify the attack, not to launch it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but WannaCry isn't highly sophisticated. It weaponizes already known vulnerabilities to exploit soft targets on a large, but unsophisticated scale (because most of the victims are soft targets in terms of computer/network security). Ransomware is not a new idea either. Combining these things (known exploits, soft targets, ransomware) doesn't require genius or _highly_ specialized domain knowledge, hard to acquire intelligence or huge amounts of resources (labor or money). Any state capable of consistently spending a couple million dollars per year on a team for offensive security operations could, I suppose, pull this off.