North Korea has launched 'sophisticated cyber espionage campaign' on US: report

North Korea has launched a "sophisticated cyber espionage campaign" against the United States, cybersecurity experts told Bloomberg News.

Beginning in late October, attackers "tried to penetrate the computer networks of at least 87 companies in the nuclear, defense, energy and financial industries," the report says. The information comes from McAfee.

Raj Samani, chief scientist at McAfee, said that the attackers sent people at those 87 firms job recruitment information over social media which contained Dropbox links to Microsoft Word documents that contained malware which allowed hackers to access their systems.

“We don’t know what their ultimate purpose is,” Samani said.

Based on the information Samani has, he can't see if the targeted companies were compromised, but suspects they were.

The codes used were tied to a team of hackers called Lazarus Group with ties to North Korean intelligence.