Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's meeting with Kim Jong-un, numerous European and American businesses are still under attack by hackers in North Korea.
The attacks have continued for over a year now, and the recent meeting of the two leaders was not enough reason for the hackers to stop.
Ongoing Hacking Campaign
The hacking campaign initially started with cyberattacks on utilities, banks, and gas and oil companies. Back when the incidents began, the tension between North Korea and the U.S. was at the highest level.
Currently, the two countries are in talks about North Korea's disarmament and have one successful meeting behind.
According to a New York Times report, this situation did not stop the hackers. Despite the countries' agreement, the hackers continued to strike and attack many more businesses from all over the world.
Last week, researchers at McAfee spotted a new series of attacks of the hackers.
Thanks to an anonymous law enforcement agency from a foreign country, they were able to get into the hackers' servers and watch the attacks happening in real time.
The researchers saw the hackers actually going after the networks of more than 100 companies from anywhere in the world, including the U.S.
The chief scientist at McAfee, Raj Samani, reported to the New York Times that the action was very active and has been going nonstop. The researches also witnessed the hackers hit 100 victims in excess.
Even though McAfee declined revealing the names of the businesses targeted in the hackers' cyberattacks, they disclosed the majority of them were based in the U.S, most concentrated in New York and Houston.
New York is considered to be the financial capital of the world, while Houston is home to major gas and oil companies in America.
In the report, it was noted that the biggest focus of the attacks were people positioned as executives or engineers.
Because these people have the biggest access to the intellectual property of their companies, therefore servers, the hackers mostly targeted them.
Generally, the U.S. was the biggest victim of the active hacker campaign. This, however, did not exclude many other cities in the world to be out of the picture.
The hackers also targeted Tel Aviv, Taipei, London, Tokyo, Madrid, Bangkok, Rome, Hong Kong and Seoul. For the most part, Russia and China were left alone.
Expected Rise of Tension
So far, president Trump and Jong-un had two meetings.
From the first meeting in June 2018, both leaders came out agreeing to put a stop to testing projectile weapons, while the second meeting last month ended very suddenly and without any agreement between the parties.
According to the New York Times report, Korea chairperson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Victor Cha, said that for 15 months, not a single weapons test has been done because of the negotiation between Trump and Jong-un.
Cha also revealed that in the meantime, the illicit cyber activities have still continued, attacking many businesses worldwide.
The tension between the countries is palpable, and the continuous hacker campaign is expected to be just an addition to it.