Funds from the ransomware attacks on hospitals subsidized military espionage activities, prosecutors say.
A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted a North Korean man on charges of stealing huge amounts of data from the computers of American military bases and defense contractors, as well as NASA and several Asian companies, in the latest sign of North Korea’s malicious cybercrime and espionage abilities.
Federal prosecutors accused the man, Rim Jong Hyok, of working with unnamed co-conspirators to steal data in 2022 from four unnamed American defense contractors and from Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. The indictment also said that the North Koreans had extracted data from computers in NASA’s inspector general office over three months that year.
In what experts called standard practice for North Korea’s cyberoperatives, Mr. Rim and his collaborators subsidized their espionage with money procured in ransomware attacks on American hospitals and health care companies, the indictment said.
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A version of this article appears in print on July 26, 2024, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Indicts North Korean in Ransomware Attacks and Theft of Military Data.