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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.""
Kim had the motive. If it is war he wants it is war he gets. We'll give worse than we get.
an ill wind that blows no good
Answer: Betteridge
How is a bunch of speculation a news story? Is this Foxdot?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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!"
Who has the motive as well as the means?
NK.
Is there any hard evidence of a false flag?
No, just the usual conspiracy theories.
The fingerprint for the attack was made to look Korean because they are traditional enemies of Japan. Whether it was really Korea or not, no one will ever know.
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?
Ev3ryb0dy kn0ws it w4s teh l33t h4x0rz who were butt-hurt from Other OS, Rootkit, etc. On the bright side, they're making fools of the government-media complex.
Because the world is just full of people who would hack a company to blackmail them not to release a movie about Kim Jong Un. Because everyone loves the Great Leader! His family's personality cult^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HVoluntary Praise Actions only take up about 1/3rd of the North Korean budget. And I mean, they totally deserve it. I mean, did you know that his father was the world's greatest golf player who never had to defecate and whose birth was fortold by a swallow and heralded by a new star in the sky?
No, of course it wasn't North Korea. Clearly it was the work of America! Because America wants nothing more than a conflict with North Korea right now. Because clearly Russia and Syria and ISIS aren't enough, no, the US obviously has nothing better to do than to try to stir up things out of the blue with the Hollywood obsessed leader of a cult state whose family has gone so far as to kidnap filmmakers and force them to make movies for him. It all just makes so damn much sense!
Cue the conspiracy theorists in three, two, one...
I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her.
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.
To make a political statement? Since when was this "a political statement"? It was an attempt to stop a movie that made fun of the Great Leader. An attempt that mostly succeeded. Which was done after previously threatening Sony about the issue.
What, exactly, is to gain by admitting culpability? Is that usually what criminals do? "Why, yes, officer! I threw the brick through my ex's window to get back at her and scare her. I'm telling you now so that you can go ahead and punish me!"
I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her.
NK denied it, rather than taking credit.
Their tools are widely distributed, so faking the source is really easy.
The US government is weird combination of ineptitude and self-aggrandizement, so the FBI claims are likely pure BS designed to make the claimants look good (they were SOOO sure that had profiled the Yosemite killer years ago that it only took two more deaths to prove them wrong).
So what's the motive then? Plain ol' extortion, or are they trying to distract the media from the CIA torture story that came out about the same time? If it's the latter, it did a good job -- the media and public seem to have the attention span of a two-year-old.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Bin Laden initially denied that he was responsible for 9/11. He only started bragging about it years later, after US was occupying Afghanistan.
Yeah but there's no juicy oil contracts to secure in best Korea.
Time will tell, but from everything I've been able to find out North Korea doesn't have an Internet pipe big enough to have moved all that data to the country in the amount of time needed to pull this off. It had to be done from physically inside the Sony network to portable hard drives or was executed from a location with a very large Internet pipe.
Regardless it was a stupendous hack with major consequences. Not applauding, but whoever did it was very good.
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...
our governments love bogey men, someone who they can point at and make us forget their own faults or to use as an excuse for more spending on the military/spy-agencies/... We have been here before, anyone remember how Saddam was supposed to have WMD (in spite of doubts from Hans Blix), Tony Blair's ''dodgy dossier''. Finding other examples is not hard.
Time will (probably) tell if it was/wasn't NK - but by then the difference will not make a story.
(signed)
Betteridge
Probably a good educated guess by the FBI. Probably will never know if North Korean government was actually involved directly. Or who actually carried out attack.
It's not the first time North Korea has denied their attacks. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking
Occam's Razor says that the simplest explanation is that it is perpetrated by North Korea. No one gained anything from preventing The Interview from being released other than NK.
The North Korea connection is entirely a fabrication. An insider sells Sony data or a criminal tries extortion attempt.
ISIS sympathizers or Russian cyber-ops get it, and are trying to use it to involve US in yet another pointless military adventure.
-- because attention to North Korea reduces attention to Ukraine or Middle East.
Perhaps you have noticed a decrease in Ukraine and Middle East coverage in the last week?
I rest my case.
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations the moment I heard them. The allegations are and always were entirely political with no basis in fact. How come people don't get arrested for trying to incite a war like they do for riots?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
North Korea has never claimed credit for any of the non-computer related provocations they've made, from the violent to the subtle, with the sole exception of those which they're unequivocally responsible for, such as North Korean Artillery firing on a South Korean island. They've denied any number of things that basically the entire rest of the world believes to be their doing.
Consider the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan a few years ago. It was sunk by an explosion not far from North Korean waters. Pretty much the entire rest of the world concluded that it was a North Korean torpedo, but North Korea denies responsibility.
This isn't to say that they did it - just that a denial isn't inconsistent with them having done it, based on past patterns of activity.
...and the US was never able to actually prove his involvement. That's why the Afghanistan war happened in the first place.
So I hear it was an inside job, how did NK get a spy infiltrated into Sony so quickly? Does NK really have that many spy assets all over the U.S. that they can whistle up as needed? Or was this an elaborate operation set up when the movie was first announced and they managed to infiltrate a NK citizen into Sony pictures in the time it took the make the movie? How does this all actually go down? FYI, NK is pretty computer illiterate over all compared to most countries and nearly every country on the planet is better positioned than NK to pull this stunt off along with a whole bunch of independent yahoos. Unless there is U.S. born traitor working for NK, seems that the possible suspects could be narrowed down pretty quickly. I am NOT saying NK was framed, but I AM saying there are a lot a people out there to do stuff for reasons I wouldn't and more real data is needed.
Keep dialing in so their 14.4k dialup modem can't dial out.
Creat a worm that blocks incoming/outgoing IP range 210.52.109.0 – 210.52.109.255 to all wordwide nodes.
Why does it make no sense to deny you were involved? North Korea typically does deny things which they actually do ( for example) while taking credit for things they don't or can't do. Their whole game is to live behind an obfuscation of words. If we actually believed them when they said they were prepared to nuke us, they would be smoking crater already. However, if we didn't quietly worry about it, they wouldn't so easily milk concessions out of us (and would probably get invaded). Their ideal outcome would be for anyone planning another Kim Jong Un movie to decide it's not worth the financial risk, while still leaving the U.S. government insufficient proof to retaliate. Don't make the mistake of believing the leaders really are as deluded as their rhetoric. They have real strategic objectives behind it.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
There is, however, possibly the world's largest repositories of rare earth metals.
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)
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.
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...
That is also true about the US too, and their adamant allegations about another country have always turned out to be true...
Well, NORAD really does track Santa. http://www.noradsanta.org/
You are saying that NK has a lack of powerful computer skills.. do you actually have a factual basis for that? They send many students outside for training and education, and there are reports that they do indeed have a cyber war unit. They used to kidnap Japanese people for information, surely they could get their hands on some Pcs running linux.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/n...
http://www.hawknest.com/
Yeah, I'm with you here. I'm sure it's more likely that this is a PR stunt gone wild and we all fell for it. Even the POTUS fell for it. Before this, I hadn't even heard of the studio, much less the movie.
Let's see...
* Sony was already in panic mode after their security breach. This sure took the new spotlight off of that.
* OK, movie is coming out now... oh, no, no it isn't, it's too dangerous! ("ooh, forbidden fruit! No one wants to SEE a BANNED movie, do you?")
* media goes nuts. POTUS makes a statement. NK kicked off the internets.
* OK, sure, you can watch the movie, but ONLY in SELECT THEATERS NEAR YOU!
* Sounds like NK pretty much held to their party line of "huh? We didn't do it! But whatever it was, I bet you deserved it, you capitalist swine!"
suckers :P
Dunno how to break it to ya mate but Santa is fuckin ya mum.
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...
Sure, but in fairness, American TLA's aren't well known for their honesty, either. Remember James 'my job is to lie to the American people' Clapper?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That is also true about the US too
And this has exactly what to do with the possiblity that NK did the Sony hack? Not much if anything.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Also, there have been no reviews of the film, either positive or negative. For a movie that looked as bad as the one shown in the previews I saw, this could what saves the box office. I can see no possible advantage for NK to invest the resources into hacking Sony over a second-rate comic movie. Who would get an advantage from the Sony hack? I'll bet a lot of Symantec licenses will be renewed before the end of the year. Sorry, just free-associating here. If I had mod points you'd get an insightful.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
1. The North Koreans have absolutely nothing to gain from the Sony hack.
2. No one who knows actual facts about this case has any interest in letting the truth be known.
3. We will never, ever know who hacked Sony, or why, until it IS in someone's interest for the truth to be known.
4. That won't happen.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
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
That is also true about the US too
And this has exactly what to do with the possiblity that NK did the Sony hack? Not much if anything.
Well, if a country has a track record of lying about the antics of other countries, one might choose not to believe them now. The US is like the boy who cried "Wolf!".
... is how many people don't want it to be North Korea.
An argument which neatly sums everything.
Except:
if it was North Korea, and they were trying to stop the movie, one has to wonder why they released it as a torrent if they were trying to stop it from being released.
The US is making the allegations, Of course it is relevant.
FWIW, I believe that North Korea made some threats about sabotaging South Korea's Nuclear piles. That, to me, is a more credible reason for taking down their internet....if that's what happened. (That their internet went down is apparently true. That it was taken down externally I have heard no acceptable proof of.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Perhaps it was someone trying to save us all from crappy movies!
FWIW, I believe that North Korea made some threats about sabotaging South Korea's Nuclear piles. That, to me, is a more credible reason for taking down their internet...
How can North Korea threaten to sabotage something that South Korea doesn't admit to? They're not a member of the Nuclear Club, last I checked.
If South Korea has a secret nuclear weapons program, that's something the world needs to know about and take actions against, just like with North Korea.
https://www.torrenting.com/det...
Fully agreed the comments posted on the original post. usgov December 24, 2014 6:56 AM Just think of who wins from this whole scenario? It's simply the US and all of its funded 3-letter organisations. So the most plausible explanation is (just like 11th september) this is from the US itself to test and fund more cyberweapons.
http://askaralikhan.blogspot.com/
Did he stop fucking you, in the ass?
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.
FWIW, I believe that North Korea made some threats about sabotaging South Korea's Nuclear piles. That, to me, is a more credible reason for taking down their internet...
How can North Korea threaten to sabotage something that South Korea doesn't admit to?
"Nuclear piles" is a synonym for "nuclear reactors" and South Korea definitely have some of these.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
So --- Kind of like slashdot stories and comments.
Let's face it, who gets blamed by the US government for **anything** is always more to do with who it's politically desirable to blame rather than who the evidence actually points at. Uncle Sam is only interested in promoting hatred against whoever he next intends to bomb, not the truth.
Because as the sole trader with N.K. they can, and do, seriously gouge them on the price of oil and most likely everything else.
That's why they put up with such xenophobic nutcases who even hate Chinese. The mother of a friend of mine had to flee the place when she married a man from China because of a large number of death threats from her neighbours. It's probably just as well because she made it out before the place devolved into starvation central in the late 60's.
I don't think it started that way but it's being milked as one - also the N.K. angle came in as a late afterthought to what looked like a ransom situation.
Who said anything about weapons, you moron?
Did he fall for it or is he getting political advantage out of it? Or of course, there could be the sheer fluke of both.
They may be grade A assholes but they are ones with an abacus. I doubt they had the patience to do such a thing let alone the expertise or the will. The story as told is a convenient way for both the criminals and Sony to deflect blame and a handy situation for the FBI to point to and scream "Cyberterrorism - give us more money to fight it!"
Everybody wins apart from N.K. and whoever in S.K. lives where some shells might land if N.K. wants to use artillery again to express their displeasure.
Considering the number of companies available for outsourcing sooner or later it will probably happen, of not already. It would help explain the mish-mash of tools used in the job. Never trust a mercenary.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If you ask me it's russia ;) ... well I'm almost half-serious. If I'm trying to hurt the U.S... but I can't confront them directly anymore... I would do what the cia did for decades versus russia... I would go around finding anyone or any situation that would throw U.S. strength against other enemies. Such as... isis... and now north korea. Russia has the hackers to do the sony job.
On the other hand... .Isis draws in a certain type of person... war hungry? I dunno... I've seen at least one guy watch isis getting killed daily.. videos... every day.. for months. ugh. so that could be us trying to bring back some war.
One theory is that Sony is doing a real life twist on that movie's plot. They make a movie they realize is going to be a big money loser, so to rescue it -- they fabricate a scenario where its offensive nature causes a situation where it causes a security risk for everyone. Film has to be pulled from the theaters to protect the people, and they get paid by insurance for the resulting losses from the "hack attempt".
Were any emails from the GoP hacking group received while N. Korean Internet went dark? It seems to me that might be a piece of evidence, as well.
Kythe
I work in Information security. NK had nothing to do with it. The blame got pointed that way so the NSA/CIA could play with their new toys. Note the Internet died in NK right after this. When you have a new wepon you have to try it out on a real target to fully test it. They picked NK because they are a small counrty that has real no defense against us.
This I can agree with. The fact that North Korea gets the blame is a political process that has little to do with truth but a lot to do with people thinking it's in their interest to go along with it. It doesn't mean people have some secret knowledge about what happened. For some it's an external scapegoat for others it's useful to pin it on the enemy, for some it's just automatic.
When something is pinned on the bad guy(Saddam, Assad,Qadaffi, Iran,Putin) there is very little motivation to challenge that. I know many cases where it's almost certainly wrong but it still has a huge impact on history. And often it assumes suicidal and evil attitudes from the bad guy rather than self interest. In other words people's brains switch to cartoon level.
My beat guess is that usa wants a new ivation target. Ebola is no longer a problem since us forces are present. What to do next... russia is to big a bite to take alone in one sitting.
Or this "threat" could just be a false flag attack from Sony, and just another way to build hype for a movie release. It gained a lot of attention and curiosity from people who would not otherwise be interested, mainly because of said terrorist threats. Nothing gets people interested in watching something like saying "you aren't allowed to watch this."
Having lived in China for 5 years, I don't think they actually like North Korea that much. There is a sense that they are like family given past alliance and similarities, cult of personality, etc. But while china now advances and moves forward, NK is like their little embarrassing little brother that dropped out of high school and they reluctantly have to try to keep them out of trouble.
The feel of China is that the top leadership are hell bent on making themselves the dominant world power of the 21st century. outsourcing, currency manipulation, and American debt are all parts of this plan. China would get pissed at an invasion of NK, not because they like them, but because it would be an invasion of "their" territory and sphere of influence.
The Korean government hacks a Japanese company and the U.S. are taking action over it. Say what? All this over a "movie" that hadn't even been released so Korea (or anyone) really knew the actual content. It's nuts to think a government would go to such lengths over something that wasn't released that could have been totally non-offensive. I could understand if some was pissed off AFTER it had been released, but not before. It's just too extreme for so many unknowns.