Samsung is allegedly going to be working hand in hand with the South Korean government in an effort to advance cybersecurity in the aftermath of the global WannaCry incident, according to a Tweet from local Bloomberg journalist Sam Kim. The two parties are apparently placing an emphasis on security in the mobile space. So far, neither Samsung nor the South Korean government said anything about this arrangement in any official capacity, so it’s unknown what they’ll be doing in the future. According to Sam Kim, Samsung said that the recent outbreak of a ransomware called WannaCry is what made it decide to join forces with the local government to double down on security.
WannaCry struck two weeks ago, compromising systems running legacy Windows versions around the world. While fully updated Windows 10 users weren’t affected, many businesses still ran on Windows 7, Vista, and XP, which meant that a wide range of entities from hospitals and schools to small businesses were affected by the attack. The malware took advantage of a flaw found in older Windows versions to encrypt all of the important files on a computer while leaving it otherwise functional. This was enough to bring operations to a screeching halt for entities that depended upon their critical data. The attack was focused on Europe but managed to find victims all over the world. WannaCry did not affect Linux systems, which included Android devices, but the concept behind the attack, the way it spread, and the method it utilized to encrypt a victim’s device could easily be emulated if a proper exploit was found.
Samsung has historically been fairly tough when it comes to security, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to see that WannaCry prompted a response from the company, even if it only hit systems that were out of date and considered insecure. Samsung has a long and storied history of including its own security patches alongside Google’s for its Android devices, as just one example of its focus on security. The company’s IoT security efforts are also said to be industry-leading, though Samsung is still experiencing some security-related issues as its Tizen OS was reportedly extremely insecure at one point.