Global Cyberattack: Europol says “too soon” to speculate upon identity of perpetrators

The European Police Office, Europol, said today (Tuesday) that it was “too soon” to speculate as to the perpetrators of the global cyberattack. This came after the discovery of a potential link with North Korea by researchers in IT security.

Jan Op Gen Oorth, the Europol spokesman indicated, “We remain open to investigating every possible lead but we are not speculating, and we cannot confirm the link with North Korea.”

He said, “It is too soon to make any concrete statements.”

Neel Nehta, a computer scientist with Google, put computer codes online, showing some similarities between the virus “WannaCry”, which affected tens of thousands of companies and public services in 150 countries, and a further series of hackings. The latter were attributed to North Korea.

Experts swiftly concluded that this evidence, even if it is are not completely conclusive, proves that North Korea is behind this IT attack. Europol considers the attack to be unprecedented.

Jan Op Gen Oorth stated, “The source of the attack could be anywhere, indeed any country. The investigation is ongoing.”

Europol updated the number of computers affected globally: the number of IP addresses affected was nearly 165,000 this morning (Tuesday). This is a decrease of 38% on the 226,800 addresses thought to be affected when Europol gave a status update on Sunday.


The Brussels Times


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