NORTH Korea will bid to hurt Britain with more cyber attacks in the next year, experts have warned.

 

Kim Jong-un's regime was blamed by Britain’s Security Minister for the ‘WannaCry’ cyber-attack which crippled the NHS in May.

 

And Robert Hannigan, former director of Britain's spy agency GCHQ, has said the UK should expect further "collateral damage" as the rogue state's posturing against the West continues.

 

He told a cyber security summit in Mayfair, Central London: “WannaCry was really a reasonably sophisticated tool, used rather ineptly. They will learn from that. People always do.

 

"They will get better at using those tools, and there are far more sophisticated tools out there, and they will start to use them.

 

“The technical sophistication of the threats is going to get worse, without question. We’ll see more ransomware, we’ll see a greater scale of attacks.”

 

Britain's Security Minister Ben Wallace last month said the Government believed “quite strongly” that a foreign state was responsible and named Pyongyang.

 

He said: “North Korea was the state that we believe was involved in this worldwide attack.”

 

The incendiary comments came 24 hours after a watchdog warned hackers could down the NHS again unless it gets its act together.

 

Hospitals and GP surgeries across England and Scotland were among at least 16 health organisations hit by a so-called ‘ransomware’ attack in May.

 

Thousands of patients were turned away and appointments cancelled as the ‘WannaCry’ virus scrambled data on computers.

 

Hackers demanded up to £500 to allow staff back onto their systems.

 

Speaking yesterday Mr Wallace said the attack could have been motivated by an attempt by North Korea to access foreign funds.

 

He said the regime has been “potentially linked to other attacks about raising foreign currency”.

 

Microsoft president Brad Smith two weeks ago pointed the finger at Kim Jong Un’s secretive state – calling for a ‘new digital Geneva Convention’ to put an end to state-sponsored cyber attacks.

 

Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4900359/kim-jong-un-north-korea-cyber-attacks/