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Did North Korea Really Attack Sony?
An anonymous reader writes "Many security experts remain skeptical of North Korea's involvement in the recent Sony hacks. Schneier writes: "Clues in the hackers' attack code seem to point in all directions at once. The FBI points to reused code from previous attacks associated with North Korea, as well as similarities in the networks used to launch the attacks. Korean language in the code also suggests a Korean origin, though not necessarily a North Korean one, since North Koreans use a unique dialect. However you read it, this sort of evidence is circumstantial at best. It's easy to fake, and it's even easier to interpret it incorrectly. In general, it's a situation that rapidly devolves into storytelling, where analysts pick bits and pieces of the "evidence" to suit the narrative they already have worked out in their heads.""
Worse than we got? A company that everyone loves to hate got embarrassed. Sony will likely lose a bunch of money. The FBI will get Beltway Cred for it's great Cyber sleuthing work. Hundreds of security consultants will get some nice Christmas bonuses. A few people will have their lives messed up.
What are we supposed to do to NK? Give them a stocking full of coal?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Kim Jong Un is exactly the type who would accept undeserved credit for a cyberattack. "What, who me? I did what? Uh ... oh really? Oh! OK, yeah everybody, I did it!"
Would you really want to send your son or daughter to die in North Korea because crackers broke into a company's servers? Also I'm not really convinced yet that NPRK's military was behind the crime.
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations that the North Korean government was behind it when the North Koreans denied it was them. If you're going to hack somebody to make a political statement, it makes no sense to later deny that you were involved. Someone might be trying to make it look like North Korea, but I seriously doubt they were directly involved in this.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Removing the government, destabilising the region and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians based solely on circumstantial evidence isn't exactly new to the US government, i'm sure they don't really care who was truly responsible.
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations that the North Korean government was behind it when the North Koreans denied it was them. If you're going to hack somebody to make a political statement, it makes no sense to later deny that you were involved. Someone might be trying to make it look like North Korea, but I seriously doubt they were directly involved in this.
Wrong--Even implausible denials can be very useful in international relations. They give sympathetic expatriates and foreigners something to support and are also useful legally. The obvious example is Putin's recent doublespeak over invading Ukraine. It is only a paper shield but it helps confuse the issues slightly, delaying and discouraging organized response of any kind.
As another example, since the UN Charter as passed, open wars of aggression have been outlawed. As a result, there have been a whole lotta agressive "self-defense."
As another example, Israel-Palestine. Regardless of which side you're on, you'll see the other side doing what you think is lying about something or the other.
Bin Laden initially denied that he was responsible for 9/11. He only started bragging about it years later, after US was occupying Afghanistan.
But I wouldn't mind sending our forces in to remove the North Korean government and return the land to South Korea...
I'm with you in spirit on that, but there's a tiny little problem with actually doing it: China actually likes North Korea for some reason, and would get very, very upset with us for even so much as supporting a South Korean invasion of the North, let alone us spearheading the removal of the (sorry, have to say it) legitimate and sovereign leadership of North Korea. In short, it would be the start of World War III (or, 'The Last War', if you prefer). I'm sure Russia would pile on, too, since they're buddies with China. Everything else would pretty much go to Hell in a handbasket pretty quickly from there.
I, too, however, am beginning to wonder if this whole incident was staged by Sony as a gigantic publicity stunt.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Um... I hate to be the non-technical person that points this out, but...
The evidence that implicates NK on the previous attacks - is it the same evidence used to assign blame in the current attack?
Is this citing the conclusions based on the same evidence/situation from previous attacks to give legitimacy to the evidence in the current attack?
What a scam! Claim something on flimsy evidence, then cite those claims to give legitimacy to the flimsy evidence!
I wonder... can I do this sort of thing in the scientific literature? Hmmmm...
What would you think if NK released a movie about killing a US president?
They've released propaganda films about nuking us. We didn't mobilize the cyber or real armies over the matter; I guess that's the difference between a modern nation-state and one held together with a pygmy's cult of personality....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
No, Occam's Razor said the simplest answer is most likely true. The OP didn't go on a flight of fantasy, you did. Nation state hacks corporation with possible major diplomatic consequences over a B-movie? Pull the other one, it's got WMDs on it.
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations that the North Korean government was behind it when the North Koreans denied it was them.
Yes, because the North Koreans are forthright and honest chaps, their statements are always unbiased and true...
If you're going to hack somebody to make a political statement, it makes no sense to later deny that you were involved.
The North Koreans do not operate on the same logical reasoning that most of the rest of the world does. Trying to apply what most of the world defines as "making sense" to what North Korea says and does in not as straight forward as you might think. They have often denied involvement in thing later proven.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I do not think you know what Occam's razor is. It does not mean you need conclusive evidence to believe in something. It means the simplest explanation tends to be the best one, other things being equal.
Actually, that's not what it says. It says that plurality is not to be posited without necessity, i.e. don't add complexity to reach a conclusion if it can be reached without adding it.
The simplest solution here isn't that it's North Korea acting based on an unreleased movie they probably hadn't even heard of before this whole debacle, displaying hacking skills not seen before, and then denying it.
Much simpler solutions could be disgruntled former employees or someone doing it for the lulz. It's not like Sony hasn't been a magnet for the latter, with all the previous hacks.
In any case, unless the three letter agencies are withholding crucial information, there's not enough to go on here to point the fingers at Kim Jong-Un. I'm sure there are people who would blame him no matter what, because frankly he's an asshole of Goatse dimensions, but the evidence needs to be far more solid than this.
But I wouldn't mind sending our forces in to remove the North Korean government and return the land to South Korea...
I would. Fund the pointless, unjust war yourself, if you want it so badly; don't take my money to do it. I don't much care for randomly invading sovereign countries and killing thousands to install puppet governments that our government likes.
And South Korea's government may be better, but it's far from freedom-minded.
I wouldn't mind at all if North Korea were suddenly free and part of South Korea. Almost everyone in North Korea would be far better off. However, doing so by military force is utterly INSANE.
Even if China didn't intervene, the fact that millions of South Koreans live within artillery range of the border with North Korea means that in a shooting war with North Korea we'd probably be looking at tens to hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties just for the South alone, and probably as many or more North Korean civilians just from economic hardships and displacement - and that's leaving out the North's ballistic missles, nukes/etc. So even if the worst case scenario doesn't occur, the minimum expected result is already horrific enough that no sane person would want to pursue it.
As for it being a publicity stunt, I considered that too at first, but Sony is going to get hammered so badly by the stuff that's been released that the lawyers' fees alone will outweigh any http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/24/1757224/did-north-korea-really-attack-sony#additional profit they could make off the movie. It would have to be something like a shady coalition of greedy entertainment industry lawyers, or a cabal of deranged Seth Rogen/James Franco fans trying to boost the movie's popularity... but at that point we're going completely off the deep end.
1) No concrete evidence that a Sovereign County hacked into Sony, but POTS says he thinks they did anyways
2) Movie is probably total piece of sh*t anyways, who cares?
3) Even if NK did it, it is not an attack on US but a foreign corp with some US holding, but still a Japanese company, why don't they saber rattle instead of us?
4) The whole thing could have been PR stunt from Sony to advertise the movie
5) Why didn't POTS just tell Sony "get your sh*t together, improve your security - tired of this crap, dayum!"
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
install a puppet government
Why does everything think that we should be setting up puppet governments?
History shows that is generally a bad idea.
We might run things for a few years, the way we did in Japan and Germany after WWII, but then it needs to be turned over to them.
In this case, "them" is South Korea, simply give them North Korea and it simply becomes "Korea".
Likewise, North Korea... don't setup a new one, just make it merge with South Korea, everyone will be better off.
Except the countless thousands that will die as a result of this, the people who have their money taken to fund the useless war, and all the people who will have to rebuild the country and suffer from the rebellions that will inevitably happen. Then people will have to deal with the South Korean government, which is only better, but still far from good.
Sometimes the adults in the room have to do what is best for everyone, even if the kids don't like it.
I don't like the world police mentality, and nor do I care for preemptive warfare. They're a sovereign country and we have no pressing reason to invade unless they physically attack us.
Of course North Korea didn't attack Sony. Asking "Did North Korea really attack Sony?" is like asking "Does NORAD really track Santa?"
The North Korea story was spin to save Sony from the devastating bad publicity about the depths of their business and technological incompetence. (The politicians who defended them will get repaid for this favor during the next election cycle. My previous comment about this from last week: They may even start using this to try to rescue that disaster of a movie. "You have to see 'The Interview'! To support free speech and America!")
The Dear Leader Of The Free World announcing "don't blame poor Sony, they were helpless victims of the evil North Koreans" totally changed the media story, saving Sony huge $$$ in both public perception and future lawsuits.
But just how America's President and trillion-dollar national security state could get things so wrong - but should always be trusted when saying who's bad and deserves to be killed, like some kind of psycho-Santa delivering death from his sleigh filled with drones - will never be questioned.
Businesses and politicians will never stop lying when it works this well.
Merry Christmas.
Used to be that East met West in Hong Kong, and the water kept the Western cultural norms from corrupting the peasantry.
Now, South Korea is the island, and North Korea is the water.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I don't buy any of it. Show me the video where Kim Jong Un threatens America. The only "evidence" we have is entirely circumstantial -- from government and media talking heads. And I wouldn't trust a word they say. The U.S. government and the media alike have entirely too much to gain by issuing propaganda and laying the groundwork for a future war. Key reasons America would love to start a war with North Korea:
1. Would complete an unfinished war we settled with armistice in the 1950's. Old warmongers have long memories and a war with North Korea would cement their legacies and would justify America's Korean War.
2. North Korea has tremendous human capital -- meaning a highly-intelligent, highly-literate workforce that the West would love to exploit. The West has every expectation that North Korea's citizens would be just like those of South Korea: westernized, consumers, who have a strong national GDP. Hundreds of bulge-bracket corporations would love to set up shop in North Korea, export goods to North Korea, trade with North Korea, sell their wares in North Korea, and employ a highly-intelligent North Korean labor pool for all sorts of professional services at dramatically lower wage rates -- like the way back office jobs have been exported to Vietnam and to the Philippines.
3. And perhaps the most important reason the U.S. would love to start -- and finish -- a war with North Korea is that America could station more of its troops there as a strategic jumping off point against Cold War foes Russia and China. Don't for a minute think that the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan by accident. Both nations border either Russia or China. That's also the reason the U.S. has continued military operations in those nations. With the U.S. posting thousands of troops on the border of Russia and China, its effectively like what the Soviet Union tried with parking missiles in Cuba -- playing the game of Risk with real lives on a global scale and trying to park your munitions, your troops, your war vehicles as close to the opponent as possible. It sends a clear message to Russia and China -- the U.S. is in your back yard.
Which is precisely why the U.S. did nothing during the Rwandan civil war. Or why the U.S. did nothing to stop genocide in East Timor that killed 100,000 people. Those nations do not border former Cold War foes. Those nations do not have exploitable human capital resources. There is conscious design into the choices behind our aggression with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea. Don't for a moment think these nations were picked at random.
I question the rhetoric coming out of Washington. We've seen too many historical examples where U.S. secret government has created propaganda to lay the groundwork for future war. We've seen too many examples where U.S. secret government has assisting in the deposing or assassination of leaders of sovereign nations (Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, for example) with the intent of installing leaders who favor American business interests. And we've seen too many examples where U.S. secret government has waged covert war against a nation (Cuba for example).
And we've seen plenty of examples of this sort of propaganda from other nations. For example, the Reichstag fire.
Don't just go for the knee-jerk American patriotic response. Do your own thinking on North Korea. Frankly, I'm still wondering how North Korea bridged a 15-year technology gap in the 1990's, when the CIA concluded that North Korea had no mid-range missile technology despite the conservative heads in America calling for more funding on Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative, but then suddenly North Korea launched a test of the taepodong 1 missile over Japan.
Again, don't just swallow rhetoric such as, "America never bargains with terrorists." That's hogwash. Do your own research and thinking. You'll note that the U.S. has given arms to dozens of hostile, terrorist groups, and has given millions of dollars to other terrorist organizations, if only to ensure those terrorist organiza
New Economic Perspectives
No, I wouldn't...
But I wouldn't mind sending our forces in to remove the North Korean government... ...A simple 2-3% tax on corporate earnings from the new United Korea until the cost is repaid, including a healthy payment to the family of any US solder who dies.
Nothing too big, so that it isn't painful enough to cause problems, but something to show that they have to do their part in paying for our services.
"The Iraq war will pay for itself." Dick Cheney, is that you?
It still gives me a little shock when I see someone express such breathtaking arrogance and ignorance.
You added a new twist, though, I have to hand it to you for suggesting that we levy a tax after "liberating" North Korea, to *literally* pay blood money to families of soldiers who die.
Most of the United States' problems around the world are exacerbated by the enforcer mentality behind much of our foreign policy, and you want to turn the U.S. into an openly mercenary state.
Bravo, sir, bravo. Tell the orderly to stop stealing your meds.
No, but I do believe that the DPNK will cause a million deaths over 20 years to its own people.
And that is a crime against humanity and all humans should feel responsible to do something about it.
As far as I'm concerned, it's just marketing bullshit trying to put a good face on Sony's latest breach. If it were their first, I might think differently, but it's pretty clear Sony's "security" is a freakin' joke. Add in a movie that would have probably bombed without all the exposure, and you have all the excuses you need to paint a "North Korea" connection.
It doesn't hurt that the US has a hate-on for North Korea so they can try to score some political points off the story, too.
Shame on Obama for selling out to Sony so blatantly.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.