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Norse Security IDs 6, Including Ex-Employee, As Sony Hack Perpetrators
chicksdaddy writes Alternative theories of who is responsible for the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment have come fast and furious in recent weeks -- especially since the FBI pointed a finger at the government of North Korea last week. But Norse Security is taking the debate up a notch: saying that they have conclusive evidence pointing to group of disgruntled former employees as the source of the attack and data theft. The Security Ledger quotes Norse Vice President Kurt Stammberger saying that Norse has identified a group of six individuals — in the U.S., Canada, Singapore and Thailand — that it believes carried out the attack, including at least one 10-year employee of SPE who worked in a technical capacity before being laid off in May. Rather than starting from the premise that the Sony hack was a state sponsored attack, Norse researchers worked their investigation like any other criminal matter: starting by looking for individuals with the "means and motive" to do the attack.
HR files leaked in the hack provided the motive part: a massive restructuring in Spring, 2014, in which many longtime SPE employees were laid off. After researching the online footprint of a list of all the individuals who were fired and had the means to be able to access sensitive data on Sony's network, Norse said it identified a handful who expressed anger in social media posts following their firing. They included one former employee — a 10-year SPE veteran who he described as having a "very technical background." Researchers from the company followed that individual online, noting participation in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) forums where they observed communications with other individuals affiliated with underground hacking and hacktivist groups in Europe and Asia. According to Stammberger, the Norse investigation was eventually able to connect an individual directly involved in conversations with the Sony employee with a server on which the earliest known version of the malware used in the attack was compiled, in July, 2014.
HR files leaked in the hack provided the motive part: a massive restructuring in Spring, 2014, in which many longtime SPE employees were laid off. After researching the online footprint of a list of all the individuals who were fired and had the means to be able to access sensitive data on Sony's network, Norse said it identified a handful who expressed anger in social media posts following their firing. They included one former employee — a 10-year SPE veteran who he described as having a "very technical background." Researchers from the company followed that individual online, noting participation in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) forums where they observed communications with other individuals affiliated with underground hacking and hacktivist groups in Europe and Asia. According to Stammberger, the Norse investigation was eventually able to connect an individual directly involved in conversations with the Sony employee with a server on which the earliest known version of the malware used in the attack was compiled, in July, 2014.
You act as if disgruntled (ex-)employees have never done such a thing before. You would be wrong.
Seems like they need to gruntle them then..
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I just talked with all the rest of the guys here on Slashdot, and we all agree: how could we be so stupid? We're all sorry and it definitely won't happen again; we'll pay really close attention to everything you say from here on out.
That sounds just like something a North Korean would say...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I like how you worked both "I told you so" and "I was right, you were wrong" in there. Wait, are you my girlfriend? Baby, is that you? Come back to bed honey, I didn't mean any of those awful things I said.
answered in a suitably apocalyptic fashion
Cool. So the rumors that Kayne West and Kim Kardiashian are moving to Pyongyang are true?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
North Carolina should not act in such regard!