Wannacry Ransomware delivered on its namesake a few weeks ago after being unleashed into the digital realm. Chaos ensued. Infosec professionals around the globe could be found curled up in the fetal position and dehydrated from crying out their bodily fluids as they lamented the patch policies of their corporate overlords. Or perhaps not. Some companies fared well.
In the weeks that followed, declarations of attribution began to fly from all corners of the media. Some claimed that the attack was carried out by a Nation State like Russia, while others pointed out snippets of code that invoked names like the Lazarus group. There was no shortage of blame going around. There is also no shortage on disagreement as to who conducted this attack and why.
One interesting theory that has emerged comes from Digital Forensics Expert Joseph Carson. To put it simply, Wannacry was used as a tool for currency manipulation and the insider trading of BitCoin.
Carson laid out his thoughts in an interview with SecurityWeek:
"WannaCry, was a sleight of hand, a deception. The ransomware was merely a mechanism to get a large number of people to open a Bitcoin wallet -- and that by itself would drive up the value of Bitcoin."
It sounds a bit far fetched until you look at the numbers. Over the course of the outbreak, Bitcoin currency value nearly doubled.
If he's right, the authors of WannaCry may have just socially engineered planet Earth into giving them exactly what they wanted all along.
You can find the interview here.
Read the full article here by [H]ardOCP News/Article Feed
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