7 Bureau 121

Just when Aakash was silently flying in the sky, another scene was taking place all around the world.

A few days ago..

In a secret location in Pyongyang, Kwanso region, North Korea

A bunch of sweaty men in a room were silently typing out codes. Before long, one of the guys in the room showed an ecstatic look and swiftly got up from his chair.

He walked towards the door under the somewhat indifferent and nervous glances of his fellow workers. He knocked on the door a few times.

Soon, the door opened and a soldier dressed in the uniform of the Korean People's Army carrying a rifle came into view.

The young man's excitement was washed away while fear crept into his whole being. He seemed to remember some unpleasant things and slowly uttered, "I… I would like to visit commander's office. I have some important discoveries to share with him."

These soldiers were here to control this bunch of computer experts but they still knew the importance of these units.

The soldier nodded and asked him to follow while going along the corridor. It could be seen that the room that the young lad came out was just one of the rooms.

The whole corridor seemed to have multiple such rooms while two guards armed with rifles stood guard at each room.

The man was soon in front of the commander of the base. The commander of the base, himself, was dressed in a soldier's garb decorated with a significant amount of medals.

The commander was also on his computer checking some documents and the latest results of the base, wondering if he could reach the quota of this month.

This was just one of the bases of the Reconnaissance General Bureau of North Korea's military. More specifically, it was a base of the famed, or should one say notorious, Bureau 121.

Bureau 121 is a North Korean cyberwarfare agency, and the main unit of the Reconnaissance General Bureau of North Korea's military. It was created in 1998 and is responsible for conducting offensive cyber operations, including espionage and cyber-enabled finance crime.

It is staffed with the best computer science experts that North Korea has to offer. These experts work together to collect intelligence and money for the state of North Korea.

Bureau 121 has been linked to several of the most dangerous malware events of the past decade. The first and perhaps most famous was the Wannacry ransomware attack, for which the US sanctioned North Korea in 2019. Wannacry infected around 300,000 devices and caused four billion dollars in damages.

The young man carefully put a bunch of documents that he had been carrying all along on the table and said, "This is something that I just discovered. If we can use this to prepare an attack on the Windows system, I am pretty sure we can surely contribute a lot to the nation and the leader."

The commander skimmed over the documents while not thinking much about it but his face grew heavier as he read more and more of the document.

The commander suddenly looked at the young man in front of him while saying, "Good. You have been exempted of your quota for the next two years. Your family will be awarded for your merit."

Every hacker that worked in Bureau 121 was to bring in, and then handover, $800,000 every year. The man had just saved himself a total of $1,600,000 worth of contribution to the state which would surely help him a lot in his life.

The young man showed a genuine smile while saying,"This is my duty." He then quickly left the room and came back to the space assigned to him.

After all, this is what hoped to get. First of all, ensure that you can get by alive and then try to improve the family's condition is what most people hoped to do.

What this man had discovered was a bug in the windows system. This was a major bug that could essentially allow Bureau 121 to commit another major mass ransomware attack that was greater than the level of WannaCry attack. If executed properly, this would surely help them a lot.

The commander quickly picked up the telephone on the table and dialed a number. The call was soon connected and a woman spoke.

"Hello, sir. How may I help you?"

"Connect me to Commander Kim Heung-kwang."(Author's note – This guy is a defector actually. Just don't know norms of north korean names. So, I named him.)

"Verification."

"1936327830"

"Please hold. The call will soon be connected."

The call was soon connected.

"Hello, commander Kim. This is Commander Choe."

"Hello.", A thick indifferent voice sounded.

"We have to arrange a meeting. I have to discuss a project with your department."

"hahahah….. Yes, why not? How big is the project?"

"Better than the 2019 one."

"Fantastic."

The two talked for a bit before hanging up. The man that just talked with commander Choe was a fellow of Bureau 121. They were just working in different branches.

This different branch that commander Kim belonged to was Unit 180. This unit was the key player of Bureau 121's illicit operations to obtain cash for the regime. It was responsible for counterattack on Bangladesh Bank and WannaCry ransomware attack.

The plan for something even bigger was on the way. This was probably the reason why Aakash's phone was blasted right through the roof even when the representatives from Microsoft were perfectly aware that he was on his way and the time of the meeting was yet to arrive.

The ransomware that had been planted in over millions of computers in countries all over the world were activated at the same time.

Of course, it was not possible to do this in mere day or so but the ones that were part of this attack had long been infected by viruses, trojans and backdoors by Bureau 121 which made it easier to deploy the ransomware attack at high speed.

The fact that this ransomware attack had even leveraged on a major Windows bug made it even harder for any sort of anti-virus softwares to save the computers from this attack and majority of the computers that were caught up in this attack were Windows machines which put a lot of pressure on Microsoft.

This was the reason that Microsoft wanted to use every means possible to get out of this predicament or this incident would surely stain Microsoft's brand reputation.