By Catherine Putz
North Korea’s near-complete isolation may have had something to do with the 2010 failure of a Stuxnet-related attack.
Reuters investigative reporter Joseph Menn reported Friday that in 2010, the United States tried to attack North Korea’s nuclear weapons program using a version of the Stuxnet virus it deployed in the same time frame against the Iranian nuclear program.
Menn reports that according to at least one U.S. intelligence source, the developers of Stuxnet made a related computer virus “that would be activated when it encountered Korean-language settings on an infected machine.” But the virus and the attack, which originated with the National Security Agency, was ultimately unsuccessful because it could not gain access to North Korean networks.
Read the full story at The Diplomat