Park Jin Hyok (Korean: 박진혁) is a North Korean programmer[1] and hacker.[2] He is best known for his alleged involvement in some of the costliest computer intrusions in history.[3][4] Park is on the FBI's wanted list.[5] North Korea denies his existence.[6][7]
Life and career
Early life
Park attended the Kim Chaek University of Technology in Pyongyang.[8] He has traveled to China in the past and conducted IT work for the North Korean company "Chosun Expo" in addition to activities conducted on behalf of North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau.[9][10]
Park is a member of a North Korea's government-funded hacking team known as “Lazarus Group (or APT 38)” and worked for Chosun Expo Joint Venture (aka Korea Expo Joint Venture), a North Korean government front company, to support the North Korean government’s malicious cyber actions.[11][12] Chosun is affiliated with Lab 110, a component of North Korea's military intelligence. Expo Joint Venture had offices in China (PRC) and North Korea.[13][14]
In November 2014, the conspirators launched a destructive attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in retaliation for the movie The Interview, a political action comedy film that depicted the assassination of the DPRK’s leader by a CIA spy. North Korea denied allegations of hacking.[15]
The United States Department of Justice has charged Park and other members of the Lazarus group for the WannaCry ransomware attack of 2017,[16] which involved the spreading of ransomware that encrypted files on victims' computers after spreading itself to other vulnerable devices on the local network that the compromised computer could access. It would then request ransom payments be made in the form of cryptocurrency in exchange for decryption keys allowing victims to recover their files. The attack affected countless numbers of businesses and organizations throughout the world, including in one incident infecting the United Kingdom’s NHS, where nonfunctional computer systems led to thousands of appointments being canceled.[17]
