Alwaght- North Korea on Thursday denied US accusations it was behind the WannaCry global ransomware cyberattack, saying Washington was demonizing it.
WannaCry infected some 300,000 computers in 150 nations in May, encrypting user files and demanding hundreds of dollars from their owners for the keys to get them back.
The White House this week blamed Pyongyang for the attack, adding its voice to several other countries that had already done so.
A spokesman for Pyongyang’s foreign ministry said the US allegations were “absurd”, adding: “As we have clearly stated on several occasions, we have nothing to do with cyber-attacks.”
Washington had “ulterior” motives, the spokesman added according to the North’s KCNA news agency.
“This move is a grave political provocation by the US aimed at inducing the international society into a confrontation against the DPRK by tarnishing the image of the dignified country and demonizing it,” he said.
The malware was able to self-propagate by exploiting a flaw in Microsoft's implementation of the SMB networking protocol. The flaw had been used for years by the US National Security Agency (NSA) for its own ends, but was published at the beginning of the year after a trove of NSA exploits was leaked.
