Axios

North Korea appears to have helmed a hacking campaign previously identified as "Operation Sharpshooter," according to a new report from McAfee, who first reported on the attacks in December.

The big picture: McAfee originally believed the attacks showed so much evidence they were from North Korea that it might indicate a different actor trying to frame Pyongyang. But the company's researchers now say that analysis of code and data from an intermediary server indicates the attacks really did originate from North Korea.

North Korean hackers continued a sustained attack on U.S. and European businesses as President Trump met with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, researchers at the cyber-security company McAfee told The New York Times Sunday.

Why it matters: North Korean hackers have been targeting financial institutions and other businesses, with reports the country is trying to circumvent sanctions. McAfee researchers told the Times they had been observing attacks for 18 months and had seen in excess of 100 victims. They said the relentless campaign did not stop for the two-day summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, which ended abruptly and without an agreement last week.

President Trump ignited outrage when he absolved Kim Jong-un of responsibility for the death of American college student Otto Warmbier, who left jail in North Korea in a terminal state.

Catch up quick: "I don't believe that he [Kim Jong-un] would have allowed that to happen; it just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen," Trump said in a press conference after meeting with the North Korean dictator in Hanoi. "Those prisons are rough — they're rough places — and bad things happened. But I really don't believe that he — I don't believe that he knew about it."

Welcome to March! The United Kingdom is due to leave the EU this month. And yet if anything, there's less clarity than ever about whether and when the U.K. might actually leave, and under what terms it might do so.

The state of play: British politics is more fractured than ever: 11 MPs have left the Tories and Labour to form The Independent Group, which is not so much a party as a cry for sanity. The opposition Labour party now wants a referendum, perhaps, and the governing Conservative party now is OK with a short delay, perhaps, but neither option seems to command a majority in Parliament.

Michael Cohen's team is working to find drafts of a false statement he made to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project in 2017 "that would reflect who edited what, and turn them over to lawmakers," the WashPost reports.

Why it matters: Cohen testified this week: "You need to know that Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it."

White House national security adviser John Bolton said on CNN Sunday that he doesn't think that the U.S.' support for dictators undermines the Trump administration's hardline stance against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.