The latest research on the WannaCry cyberattack suggests at least one of the perpetrators was a Chinese speaker.
Analysis of the ransom notes distributed to victims of the international attack by security firm Flashpoint appears to show linguistic traits of a “native or a least fluent” Chinese speaker.
“Analysts also compared the ransom notes to previous ransom messages associated with other ransomware samples to determine if there was reuse. Unsurprisingly, there are many similarities, but an exact match was not found,” the firm continued in a blog post.
Findings determined that such a speaker had written the original note, which was then translated into 28 languages. Of these translations, only the English and two Chinese versions were done by a human, with the rest the result of Google Translate.
“Flashpoint assesses with moderate confidence that the Chinese ransom note served as the original source for the English version, which then generated machine translated versions of the other notes,” the blog post comments.
Despite the relatively small Bitcoin profits gained from WannaCry, the disruption continues to see nervousness among the international business community, which is scrambling to ensure it is not held to ransom on such a scale yet again.
The exact nature of the attack remains shrouded in mystery, however, with mainstream media yesterday citing ex-US Security Chief Michael Chertoff’s suspicions the party behind it could, in fact, be North Korean.