The cyberattack that started in Ukraine and went global didn’ t seem like an effort focused on making money.
We are two months into “ransomware as a mainstream news topic, ” and we have quickly moved toward scrutiny of a new wrinkle in that kind of cyberattack: when ransomware is used as a smoke screen for something else.
On Tuesday, an attack that looked an awful lot like the WannaCry ransomware hacking in May started in Ukraine and spread throughout the world. But security researchers are beginning to infer that the attack was really about causing damage to computers. The money? Eh, not a big deal.
In fact, it would have been awfully hard for most victims of the attack to pay a ransom, since the lone email address connected to it was shut down by a German email provider.
So why bother? That’s the question that intrigues security researchers. The most obvious answers are to cause trouble or send a political message. The attack that started in Ukraine appeared to have been timed to hit the day before a national holiday celebrating the country’s first constitution after breaking away from the Soviet Union. It was not a leap for many to conclude the assault was launched by Russian hackers.
But there is another school of thinking: Certain information connected to the attack indicated it may have originated in Iran. Perhaps the attack was by Iranians trying hard to look like Russians while testing a new cyberattack before going after other targets — a sort of beta test for cyberwarfare.
Or was it in fact Russian hackers, or someone else, pretending to be Iranian?
One aspect of the attacks that does not appear to be terribly complicated is where the tools for these hacks have come from — the National Security Agency. The tools were among a collection of cyberweapons created by the N. S. A. and, unfortunately, stolen and posted online.
The N. S. A. has not acknowledged it had anything to do with these hacking tools. But plenty of people, including a few in Washington, are starting to ask what the agency plans to do to combat them.
