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North Korea Denies Responsibility for Sony Attack, Warns Against Retaliation

Posted by Soulskill on from the it-was-the-one-armed-nation-state dept.

jones_supa writes: A North Korean official said that the secretive regime wants to mount a joint investigation with the United States to identify who was behind the cyber attack against Sony Pictures. An unnamed spokesman of the North Korean foreign ministry was quoted by the country's state news agency, KCNA, describing U.S. claims they were behind the hack as "slander." "As the United States is spreading groundless allegations and slandering us, we propose a joint investigation with it into this incident," the official said, according to Agence France-Presse. Both the FBI and President Barack Obama have said evidence was uncovered linking the hack to to North Korea, but some experts have questioned the evidence tying the attack to Pyongyang. Meanwhile, reader hessian notes that 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has offered to let the hacker community distribute The Interview for Sony. It's an offer Sony may actually find useful, since the company is now considering releasing the movie on a "different platform." Reader Nicola Hahn warns that we shouldn't be too quick to accept North Korea as the bad guy in this situation: Most of the media has accepted North Korea's culpability with little visible skepticism. There is one exception: Kim Zetter at Wired has decried the evidence as flimsy and vocally warns about the danger of jumping to conclusions. Surely we all remember high-ranking, ostensibly credible, officials warning about the smoking gun that comes in the form of a mushroom cloud? This underscores the ability of the agenda-setting elements of the press to frame issues and control the acceptable limits of debate. Some would even say that what's happening reveals tools of modern social control (PDF). Whether or not they're responsible for the attack, North Korea has now warned of "serious consequences" if the U.S. takes action against them for it.

4 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. of course it wasn't NK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    US gov't never passes on an opportunity to fabricate stories which make their foes look bad (Russia, Syria, Iran, Lybia, Venezuela, etc)

    1. Re:of course it wasn't NK by jbolden · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The reason is the USA government has a pretty good track record of not blaming foreign countries for stuff they didn't do. Meanwhile US opponents have a long history of denying involvement when they were. Comparing what is know 10 years later is pretty close to what you get from blindly believing the USA government on culpability.

  2. Re:Whether it was NK or not doesn't matter by kruach+aum · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used Freedom with a capital F as a technical term. Actual freedom would be very good, as North Korea is one of the worst places in the world. Things like the 3-generation punishment policy, widespread famine, an insane ruler, prison camps, etc. etc. should just not exist anywhere on earth. However, my point was that the US does whatever it wants, not that NK isn't a horrible place.

  3. Re:False Falg? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sony.

    This movie that was going to flop as unfunny... now is rated 10/10 on IMDB and would rake in millions should Sony release it in the next few weeks.