An excerpt from my July 2021 conversation with Josh Malm at the CDA Institute in Ottawa, Canada:
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security said that foreign threat actors trying to influence all facets of Canadian life online is now the new normal. The CCCS 2020 threat report stated that state-sponsored programs, which included North Korea’s, pose the greatest strategic threat to Canada. What threats do North Korean cyber criminals pose to Canada?
The threat from North Korea’s cyber capabilities is twofold. They can make money from criminal activity in cyber space to bring in hard currency, but they are also using cyber crime as a form of asymmetric warfare. North Korea recognizes that countries, including South Korea, the United States and Canada are increasingly dependent on technology. They view this as a vulnerability—there is the potential to disrupt society, cause chaos, and hold societies hostage through technology. Canada is very vulnerable. Not just to the threat from North Korea, but from cyber actors around the world. In particular, the North Koreans are suspected to have been involved in the WannaCry ransomware attack, which targeted 150 countries. Canadian citizens have been implicated—not only as victims, but allegedly, as recruits by the North Koreans to help carry out their operations.
North Korean cyber capabilities are quite sophisticated, strategic, and carefully managed. We suspect that it goes all the way to the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RBG), which is North Korea’s intelligence agency. Cyber crime is being orchestrated, not only at the very top levels, but in a very secretive fashion, and in coordination with government entities. That means there may be scores of North Koreans working overseas in secretive circumstances, perhaps not even on North Korean passports, because they are operating under the umbrella of intelligence. It makes the already volatile security environment even more precarious.
Read the full transcript here.
Leading U.S. experts and former officials to identify actionable policy steps the White House and Congress should take to address the growing threat from North Korea.