The British government has admitted publicly for the first time that it is all but certain North Korea carried out the "WannaCry" malware attack which devastated NHS IT systems in May. A report released by the NAO on Friday found that hospital trusts were left vulnerable to the attack because basic recommendations on cyber-security were not followed.

As many as 100 unwitting activists were recruited to help organize events in the United States both before and after the election by the same St. Petersburg-based Russian troll farm behind scores of fake social media accounts that purchased ads to sow discord during the 2016 campaign. The revelation comes from a report in the Russian business magazine RBC published on Tuesday morning.

Hackers from North Korea are reported to have stolen a large cache of military documents from South Korea, including a plan to assassinate North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un. Rhee Cheol-hee, a South Korean lawmaker, said the information was from his country's defence ministry. The compromised documents include wartime contingency plans drawn up by the US and South Korea.

Moscow was probably behind interruptions in Latvia's mobile communications network before Russia's war games last month, in an apparent test of its cyber attack tools, Baltic and NATO officials said, based on early intelligence of the drills.