Lazarus APT

Lazarus APT is an advanced persistent threat that is known to come from the Lazarus hacker group known to be run by the North Korean government. The Lazarus APT may be leveraged by the hackers in a way to attack and compromise specific targets that groups wish to expose information on for malicious intent.

Also called Hidden Cobra, the group behind Lazarus APT is usually motivated by potential financial gain, which can be had by collecting data on certain targets that may belong to financial institutions or other entities that have banking data. The Lazarus APT may be used to overwrite the MBR (Master Boot Record) of an attacked system rendering it at the mercy of the malware attack leaving it open to scouring data.

The Lazarus APT attacks by North Korean hacker groups is closely tied to threats like WannaCry Ransomware, which may be used as an SMB (Small to Medium-sized Business) exploit attack vector. Even though the common computer user may not be a specific target for Lazarus APT, it can still be a nasty infection that ends up on a PC. In most cases, Lazarus APT targets financial institution systems and is in business to get data so its authors can be granted a large payday.