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FBI: North Korean Hackers "Got Sloppy", Leaked IP Addresses
An anonymous reader writes "The FBI launched a PR counterattack against skeptics of the assertion by the US government that North Korean hackers were responsible for anonymous threats received by Sony before its scheduled premiere of the film The Interview. Sony initially cancelled the Christmas day release, but later relented after receiving extensive criticism. In a speech at a New York City cybersecurity conference hosted by Fordham University, FBI Director James Comey said that while the attackers concealed their identify by using proxy servers, on occasion they "got sloppy" and made direct connections, exposing their true IP addresses; these indicated a North Korea origin. Comey also mentioned additional corroborative evidence, including patterns matching those seen in previous attacks known to have come from North Korea, but was guarded on details. Also at the Fordham conference, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper mentioned recently meeting the Kim Yong Chol, the North Korean general in charge of cyberwarfare. Clapper emphasized Kim's belligerence and lack of a sense of humor, implying that an advance screening of "The Interview" would likely have enraged and provoked the North Korean brass."
How do they know that the connections from North Korea weren't proxied themselves?
If I was going to launch a hack as major as the Sony one, I'd absolutely 100% be sure to leave some breadcrumbs (perhaps even multiple trails) to cover my own tracks.
Cliche movie quote: "he's clean...too clean..."
Seriously? Who writes this stuff?
The CIA.
Until now, I believed it was North Korea.
But the US government always lies. I'm starting to doubt!
Right. Because no one can proxy through N Korea...
Sometimes, Occam's razor comes to bear.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Listening to his speech is like sitting through a Transformers movie. You know the words, and you know the terms, but theyre all used in an entirely incoherent fashion. James seems to think hacking works just like a James Bond film in that its all about time. hackers that 'disconnect quickly' wont be found and those that 'get sloppy' will be detected by some ostentatious array of flashing lights and sirens attached to a mainframe.
James hasnt pulled his star wars head out of his NCIS ass and given any pertanent information like how hackers breeched sony, what attack vectors were used, what exploits were performed (if any) and what if any IDS or firewall technology was complicit in the breech. So given the lack of seriously technical information surrounding this leak its more than plausible by Occams Razor that Sony was the result of a simple phishing attack or bruteforce. Its also a little too convenient that a country which outright bans american films and that would never have to tolerate its citizenry watching it, happens to care enough to make a retaliatory strike against what for all intents and purposes is a nonthreat. What IS however quite possible is a disgruntled employee simply decided to dump the mail server to the pirate bay, and because you can as a business affect an insurance claim against hackers, its convenient to do so in the face of a movie that will in all likelyhood barely break even.
Good people go to bed earlier.
>And now the US' FBI has launched a rebuttal to crickets chirping on Slashdot.
Then you haven't read article after article, plain and simple.
Bruce Schneier and Marc Rogers are two sources that should have convinced you. But they didn't. Because you didn't read their summaries on this. Because you're _not_ reading "article after article."
North Korea denies North Korea attacked Sony. Everybody else pretty much agrees North Korea did it... including North Korea, who claimed Sony was committing an act of war...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Is this the same James Clapper who lied to Congress, and now expects us to believe him?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yup, definitely North Korea! There is no possibility that anyone could have setup a proxy account on some North Korean IPs. Apparently that would never happen. Nope, not one iota of possibility. Those were definitely the originating IP addresses.
Here is what I see as possible:
1. North Korea managed to develop an acceptable army of hackers on their own in 5 years. (No internet in 2009, supposedly)
2. A group of hackers attacked Sony and North Korea managed to get tangled up in this with the release of the Interview.
3. China managed to help North Korea develop a group of hackers in 5 years.
4. Koreans from South Korea or Japan (There are several in Japan trying to get into government positions) who actually proxied into North Korea and executed the attack. (Samsung?)
5. Koreans in the US or elsewhere in the world managed to execute the this attack via proxy because they really don't like Sony?
6. Cyber Command or some other US agency decided to execute the attack, because let's rally the troops against North Korea because Syria is getting old?
7. Sony managed to pull off the entire thing because, "Rootkit 2005?"
More possibilities, but as this list grows longer, the realm of possibility gets less likely.
Place something witty here
Yup, definitely North Korea! There is no possibility that anyone could have setup a proxy account on some North Korean IPs.
Do you understand how impossible it is to get "a proxy account" into or out of North Korea? Clearly you do not. The have only one single block of IPv4 addresses.
The "got sloppy and leaked IP addrs" sounds like the same way the Silk Road server was found. I wonder what parallel construction existed (NSA?) telling the FBI where to look, and what to look for. Of course, we'll never hear those details because, "National Security".
Seriously? Who writes this stuff?
Sony's script writing department.
Can't you tell they've gotten a lot better, lately?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
"Clapper emphasized Kim's belligerence and lack of a sense of humor, implying that an advance screening of "The Interview" would likely have enraged and provoked the North Korean brass."
Well FUCK ME: if Kim Yong Chol can't take a little "jokey-joke" then obviously it was DPRK who stole the cookies from the cookie jar!
"FBI Director James Comey said that while the attackers concealed their identify by using proxy servers, on occasion they "got sloppy" and made direct connections, exposing their true IP addresses; these indicated a North Korea origin."
Well SHIT: apparently when the attackers connect from Eastern Europe: "it's a proxy server" but if they connect from an IP address inside a regime the CIA has a hard-on for pressuring economically: it's a smoking gun.
"Comey also mentioned additional corroborative evidence, including patterns matching those seen in previous attacks known to have come from North Korea, but was guarded on details"
BLAH BLAH "secret evidence" BLAH: here's the problem with sticking your nose up everyone's ass Clapper, even when you "know" something is a fact: nobody believes you because the evidence was gathered through spying and deciept! Even if you manage to fabricate some "parallel" construction without revealing which routers on the TREASURE MAP are poisoned: nobody will fucking believe you because you've lost all credibility.
Essentially, the FBI is saying "Trust us: you know we're hacking everyone else so you can trust us when we say we have SECRET EVIDENCE that North Korea hacked Sony". Everything else is just confirmation bias bullshit.
I'm by no means a penn-tester, but I know the routine well enough to say that claims of attack heuristics having unique or distinct fingerprint are pretty fucking sketchy. 2/3rds of Penn-testers never have to do more than litter "SEX TAPE" cds/usb thumb drives in the parking lot, run a metasploit scan, set up a fake wifi hotspot, or ARP-Spoof the router to get everything they need for total network rape.
If a random hacker owns my box using these tactics, did North Korea do it because we've seen them run Metasploit scans before?
This shit was obviously a for-profit hack which went pear shaped, and then the State Deparment/defense Intelligence/cyber-warfare wing jumped on this shit like a bunch of opportunist dogs in heat. Not the case? Then how about some of that transparency Obama promised us and they can pull the viel off the SECRET EVIDENCE or STFU and quit wasting everyone's time pretending they need an excuse to put economic sanctions on North Korea.
Do it cause "glorious leader has a bad haircut" for all I care, but stop pissing on us and telling us it's raining: I'm sick of being lied to be these assholes.
"We know it, but won't tell you. Trust us".
Sorry, FBI, but I don't trust you this > much. Based on experience.
(Not that I trust -- or somehow like! North Korean regime, mind you).
Clapper lid to Congress under oath. What are the odds he'll tell the truth at a random conference?
I don't feel like looking it up, but I'm fairly sure I remember news stories about the FBI lying as well. (To the FISA court? I forget.) Anyway, their word is meaningless. They are without honor.
There you go. Pull the other one. Like my teacher said, "Show your work"
And it wasn't 'criticism' that motivated Sony to release the movie. That statement sounds more like some people are feeling all self important and stuff.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It must be true, Colin Powell brought a vial to the United Nations Security Council, and claimed it contained a 99.9999% pure North Korean IP.
It has to be North Korea! A trusted inside source named Ahmed Chalabi told them so!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Playing devil's advocate, it's possible that it wasn't the North Koreans who '"got sloppy" and made direct connections, exposing their true IP addresses'. Another explanation would be that some other group is responsible and got clever, routing attacks via North Korea to shift the blame.
One minute they're telling us that they're so skilled that they MUST be state-sponsored, the next they're telling us that they're too sloppy to spoof their IP addresses. MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Bruce Schneier and Marc Rogers are two sources that should have convinced you. But they didn't. Because you didn't read their summaries on this. Because you're _not_ reading "article after article."
Actually I read those articles and all they introduced was plausible deniability. Which could be done with any hack ever performed. Congratulations. Meanwhile the US names the individuals they think are responsible and even explains how they came to those conclusions. Schneier and Rogers are brilliant and great unbiased reporters in all things technical. But they're not exactly hands on with the data forensics in this case which puts them at a disadvantage.
Let's rephrase the question: what exactly would the US Government have to release to you in order to believe it was the DPRK that committed this hack? Oh, you're so opposed to that idea that your theory of "North Korea is not involved in the attack" has no falsifiable scenario? Then these debates are pointless.
The CIA has learned over the decades that it really doesn't matter how many times you fuck up, or how awful and short-sighted your intelligence is, or even how many international incidents you cause or stupid wars you help start. All that matters is how well you bullshit the American people. And the American people are pretty easy to bullshit.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Satire should NEVER be illegal.
Just go ask Salman Rushdie, a man who risked his own life by refusing to back down from his novel in the face of very real threats to his life. He'll tell you, like he did regarding the Charlie Hebdo attacks, that satire "has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity." Neither you, me, a state, or a group of religious fanatics should get to say what speech is or is not acceptable.
Not that I condone the illegal actions, but the Norks were just trying to save us all from a shitty movie.
Perhaps you never saw Naked Gun 2 1/2? Team America? If I really felt like it, I could dig up quite a few comedies where we assassinate the living leader of a country that is considered to be the bad guy. Strangely, you think you're unique and this occasion was unique. Not going to go on about free speech but the irony is pretty intense when you consider the lack of human rights in North Korea.
There is no contradiction here... lots of skilled people do sloppy work on occasion, especially on something drug out over weeks. Just ask any programmer if they've ever written a bug.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Right, because you have any idea whether it can or can't be done...
"Everybody else pretty much agrees North Korea did it... "
Wait, what? I was under the impression that -no one- thinks North Korea did it. I certainly don't, and that's in part because my government is so -focused- on getting us to believe they did.
And in part because the president is a democrat (pwned by Hollywood).
And in part because of what was hacked, what was released.
(another) data breach is embarrassing. An attack by NK garners sympathy. Also, without this hack The Interview would have made about a dollar.
No idea why 'North Korea did it' can possible be modded "Informative".
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Do you understand how impossible it is for your house to be robbed? Clearly you do not, you only have the one.
A better analogy would be "I have one tree that I have to monitor everyday. I know nobody is lurking in my tree because I can inspect it. You have an entire forest covering North America. How do you know there is no one lurking in that forest?"
North Korea is goddamn insane. I wouldn't be surprise if these connections don't allow SSL and have someone eyeball reading traffic that goes across each IP address and blocking it if they don't know what it is. Did you read the wikipedia article linked above? It's the government allocating these IP addresses to itself.
I just saw a documentary by PBS on North Korea. The only way they could get movies and music into North Korea was sneaker net across the border with China. Unreal.
Stupid logic is stupid.
I couldn't agree more.
Seems like there would be logs upon logs of suspicious activity (or patterns) from both the time spent connected learning the system / figuring out whats what, and time spent leaching off 100TB, right? If that is how it happened as we're told. I also doubt Korea, but there has got to be a shit-ton of traffic logs that point somewhere.
You are correct in that it shouldn't need to be debated as it should outright be LEGAL. A "living leader" of any country is just a person; they are no different than any of us. Your only logical position would be to make it illegal to make a movie about assassinating any living person.
Everybody else? Hardly. Within the security community it is pretty hotly debated, and this latest revelation does not exactly help things.
Stop calling these self-promoting headline grabbers "security experts". They were wrong, and obviously so in a big way, even at the time. They two words "security expert" should never again be applied to these idiots who couldn't wait to call the FBI wrong. The Whitehouse had the resources of the USA including the NSA at their disposal. Anyone who thought their pet theory trumped that is by definition a "security moron".
Given that they talked about how closely it matched one of their 'simulations', you might not be far off. Last time I chatted with someone who took part in a cyberwar game, it really did read like the plot of a B movie rather than something dull like an actual security expert would come up with.
What rock did you just crawl out from under?
Most are in agreement that North Korea did NOT do this.
I'm a Network Engineer. I have been in the I.T. field for 30 years and my specialty is information security. My Job is to break into networks, to make sure people can't break into networks. I'm a professional white hat hacker.
Part of my job is watching the hacking trends. I watch the forums, newsgroups, blogs, video channels, chat rooms, etc. etc. I do this to keep an eye out on the hackers to see if they are planning any cyber attacks on my customers. I also have been watching other cyber conflicts around the world, and Sony has been in a cyber war for nearly a dozen years. They have angered a lot of people.
Sony has a history of not treating their own employees very well, taking hostile acts against their customers, and this is usually a mixture for disgruntled employees.
Any large network would notice several terabytes going over the lines, and we are talking about a hundred times that. North Korea does not have the bandwidth for that, even if they can keep their electricity running, and they are not going to launch an attack on a stupid company over a stupid movie while Obama has been pointing fingers and threatening him for years.
In addition, I know at least 100 other people in my same field and our combined experience is well over 1200 years, and I am telling you, there is NO WAY North Korea was behind these attacks.
The FBI is full of it.
If we are following the narrative of a well trained state sponsored group then there is a bit of a contradiction. While people can be sloppy, this type of mistake would be a bit out there in a single location group with oversight.
On the other hand, it is exactly what one would expect from a diverse group of individual amatures from a variety of countries like many hacking collectives are.
It's handy for departmental empire building, cheap politics and demands for funds if it's North Korea instead of the ordinary bunch of criminals that it appeared to be until long after the actual hacks happened. North Korea complaining about a movie about the killing of their high priest of a cult to his dead ancestors (that place is weird) is a given whether they were involved or not and is not evidence of any kind. I'm sure they would have loved to have done it, but it's very unlikely that they did
This information leaked by Clapper and Comey while not exactly a lie is misleading at best. Without the exact timeframe of the "got Sloppy" IP's it is not possible to determine if this is actually NK actioning an attack or GOP making it look like NK after the fact.
It all comes down to the fact that the NK / The Interview connection was not voiced by GOP until after the press had latched on to that link to point the finger at NK because of Sony pictures being the producer of The Interview. Now if the sloppy tradecraft (very unlikely) leaking a NK IP (175.45.176.0 – 175.45.179.255, 210.52.109.0 – 210.52.109.255 take your pick) prior to any mention of NK being responsible in the press then that would lend strong credence to that assertion. Otherwise it may point to GOP being unconnected with NK apart from PWNing either a machine within NK or via a BGP poisoning attack of a China Telecom router. Which neither China Telecom or NK are going to openly admit because of loosing face. Remember also that most of the machines in China & NK that run commercial OS's do so outside the ULA and are thus unable to keep patched and are thus open to being attacked by many known zero-day issues.
In the end it all comes down to this, governments are very bad at doing business and whoever GOP owes their allegiance or funding to, the attack on Sony was a covert criminal act conducted possibly across international boundaries and thus it needs to be treated as such. So If and when their is conclusive proof of someone who is responsible then legal recompense needs to be sought. Unfortunately international law and covert actions being what it is, it seems unlikely that even given the first the second will reach some resolution. FWIW this is a teachable moment for all large corporations, so start listening to their CISOs and give them the funds and manpower to properly secure their networks in the current climate.
we do actually, because the pirate bay spoofed their IPs to appear to come from North Korea as a prank a year or two ago.
TL;DR - They never had dealings in "Best" Korea, and it was a technical joke.
Routing attacks via NK? You're a moron.
" there is NO WAY North Korea was behind these attacks."
Thanks Mr Anon. We'll all take your word on the subject even though it's based on having absolutely ZERO inside knowledge of ANYTHING related to this situation.
If you do not understand that every packet in and out of NK is logged then hand in your geek badge. If you do not understand that major efforts over the last few years have focused on being able to scrutinize all that traffic successfully then hand in your geek badge. If you do not understand that all activity including packet size packet count and timing information through NSA managed Tor nodes can be used to trace an attack especially one transferring such massive quantities of data making it impossible to hide even with obfuscation then hand in your geek badge, you truly are an idiot who slept through the Snowden revelations. They KNOW who conducted this attack and they will never tell you why for good reason. Some "security expert" claiming otherwise if no such thing, but you're always find some dummy looking for a headline.
Trivial.
Set up a really good firewall.
On one interface, install a porn server.
On the other interface, set up a LAN party of teenage boys.
Wait. It won't take the whole 5 years.
Log in or piss off.
I like it when the FBI harasses emotionally unstable and impressionable kids for weeks so they can frame them in a fake bomb plot.
Yes, but they're mostly used by foreigners visiting the place. Which means it's possible they were occasionally proxying through one of those foreign machines. That's far more likely than North Korea actually, though it's also possible North Korean hackers went in (proxy-less) and dug around after the initial breach.
Hackers don't "get sloppy" technologically. They have scripts to prevent that. They get sloppy in the real world.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Let's rephrase the question: what exactly would the US Government have to release to you in order to believe it was the DPRK that committed this hack?
Unedited video of Apollo 11 going to the moon where Neil Armstrong found a second gunman guarding Obama's birth certificate.
I've not seen anything that the government has released regarding this. I have heard speculation that this was North Korea, but haven't been shown any actual evidence. So to your questions answer: I'd need evidence. IP logs, exploits used written in proprer north korean grammar or something. Anything other than Comey and Clapper saying it was them the bad koreans ... they did it.
The trust of the intelligence community was proven to be broken repeatedly by the FBI/DOJ/FISA/NSA/CIA/IRS. Blind faith isn't an option any longer. Proof or it didn't happen.
eerily similar to the claims made by Cheney that there WMDs in Iraq. We're still looking for those.
You appear to have missed recent news reports stating that ISIS is using chemical weapons they obtained from storage locations in Iraq, where they had been put by the Saddam regime.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"The proxy account" would be a compromised North Korean computer running arbitrary code. No hacker in the world would use legitimate proxy servers to carry out attacks as you can bet that they hold logs.
Right now there is a controversy going on in India. A top Muslim actor played the lead role in a movie that makes fun of Hindu godmen, has scenes where the prime Hindu deity Shiva gets chased down the streets of India, losing his clothes and ends up in underwear. Many Hindu organizations are outraged, but none of them have urged any of their followers to kill anyone. They petitioned the courts to ban the movie. India has a board of film censors, it approved the movie. The head of the board is a Catholic Christian. She has been quick in the past to ban movies that "hurt the sentiments of the Christian/Muslim communities and might endanger communal harmony". Courts have refused to ban the movie. And all the Hindu organizations are being lectured on tolerance, freedom of expression etc.
My problem with the West is that never find good things to encourage and praise. With all that caste, linguistic, religious divisions and abject poverty India is struggling to be a democracy, to uphold values of freedom of expression etc etc. Ostensibly West wants to promote these values. But most stories about India are about its problems.
In the face of Paris outrage, as part of denouncing terrorism, if they have shown a token respect for India/Hindus, that would send shock waves among the Muslim communities. "You attack us violently, we will show sympathy and support for your enemies, the Hindus" is an angle that might play well.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's a great point Anonymous North Korean Coward... :D
http://www.beanleafpress.com
How about the one thing it hasn't released solid proof . Words are fine but when there is nothing to back them up then you expect me to take your word in trust or faith alone. Sorry but you Government does not have a good track record in either of those areas.
Even then, there's no reason to control what people should make movies about at all. There could be a reason to control what people do in the if they're filming in the United States. For example you can't be filming in the United States and commit actual crimes, like robbing a bank and then filming it in order for a movie.maybe you could open up yourself to problems by filming a movie about specific actual people who are not what they call persons of famous people. But these may be civil claims I see torts, rather then criminal claims.
"Do you understand how impossible it is to get "a proxy account" into or out of North Korea? Clearly you do not."
So the North Korean computers are completely hack proof, and not a single one is a member of a botnet, despite sanctions making access to patches more difficult. Wow, they must be really advanced, we should get them to fix our computers while they're at it....
This is just another example of the flimsy evidence that the FBI base cases around. Next they'll be linking the IP packets back to North Korea based on the IP batch. And attaching lie detectors to the packets to determine if the evil bit is set. If you stop believing Hollywood, and start looking at history, you'd see that the FBI has a terrible history of politically based investigations and cases built on later discredited evidence.
Yup, definitely North Korea! There is no possibility that anyone could have setup a proxy account on some North Korean IPs.
Do you understand how impossible it is to get "a proxy account" into or out of North Korea? Clearly you do not. The have only one single block of IPv4 addresses.
Why would DPRK hackers be using the DPRK IPv4 address space when they are reportedly set up in China ? When I visited North Korea 6 months ago, the largest, most modern, and most prestigious hotel in the largest and most prestigious city (Pyongyang) was using dialup for internet access. To a Chinese ISP.
There are too many inconsistencies in the FBI's story. There are too many liars and too many suspects on all sides. Unless someone takes credit, there is no way to know who did the hacking.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
"Everybody else pretty much agrees North Korea did it"
You misspelled "Nobody but the FBI thinks North Korea did it"
Look, the FBI won't release ANY evidence. Meanwhile half a dozen bloggers who have looked at the data have pointed out that the preponderance of evidence shows that it was an insider. Like timestamps showing the data was copied at USB 2.0 speeds, for example. How are people missing this information? Are there really THAT many people living under proverbial rocks and posting on /. ?
Obligatory "you got lucky that a n00b modded you all the way up to 5" song and dance
"having absolutely ZERO inside knowledge of ANYTHING related to this situation."
Except people downloaded and actually looked at the data. Zero, huh?
Go back to living under that rock, etc etc.
I think his point is that there is no possible way that Iraq could have made NEW chemical weapons at any point after victory was declared in May 2003 (end to major combat operations, etc).
You and I know that those chemical weapons were known about because they were cataloged and not moved after Gulf War I in the 90's. You and I know that chlorine wasn't a "WMD" that the Bush administration referred to. You and I know those things. But a sizable block of the general public has simply been fooled into thinking that whatever is found NOW in Iraq is proof positive that Saddam was developing WMDs (the Bush admin meant Uranium-fulled weapons like nukes) in 2002.
Next he'll tell us that Saddam flew those planes into the buildings himself and parachuted out at the last minute.
I wonder what the Great Leader is going to do to his staffers who "got sloppy" and forgot to use proxies? That drop-chair scene from Austin Powers comes to mind.
Table-ized A.I.
> apparently when the attackers connect from Eastern Europe: "it's a proxy server" but if they connect from an IP address inside a regime the CIA has a hard-on for pressuring economically: it's a smoking gun.
Actually, in this case it actually is good evidence. Eastern Europe is full of open proxies, and you can tell they are open proxies by actually using them as proxies. North Korea has a total of 1024 IP addresses assigned, and fewer than that in use. US intelligence has mapped most of those to individual people or offices. So yeah, when messages come from the IP of the appropriate NK government offices, it actually is reasonably strong evidence.
North Korea, with its tiny allocation, is not exactly the bastion of well-secured machines. It's entirely plausible that a false flag operation launched some (likely trivial) part of the operation from a compromised machine in North Korea because they knew that as soon as the FBI found a North Korean IP in their traffic they'd stop bothering to look any further.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
(the Bush admin meant Uranium-fulled weapons like nukes)
If they had meant only nuclear weapons, they would have SAID nuclear weapons. They meant WMDs, including chemical weapons. The Bush Administration was condemned because they said Saddam had WMDs, and supposedly none were found when the U.S. invaded. Yet, now ISIS is reported to have WMDs they obtained from storage facilities in Iraq. Of course, all of this overlooks the fact that the primary reason which the Bush Administration gave for invading Iraq was that Saddam was egregiously violating almost every aspect of the agreement which ended Gulf War I.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Hackers don't "get sloppy" technologically. They have scripts to prevent that. They get sloppy in the real world.
Clearly you have never dealt with actual hackers. Every one I have ever seen has gotten sloppy at some stage, and that was with hackers up to Advance Persistent Threat level. Or did you mean any sloppiness was by the hacker and not by the script, including the hacker's sloppiness writing the script, so the ever-present sloppiness is in the real world? If that is what you meant then I agree. The scripts/programs always do exactly what they were programmed to do, even if that is not what the programmer intended.
They've been going on about the "elite" hackers North Korea has supposedly trained and deployed, but now they supposedly made an amateur mistake like not covering their trail through proxies?
Shit, man, the US "intelligence" services just provide more and more comedy for the world as time goes on... what a freakin' JOKE.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
What is more, 100 terabytes of company data is a lot to download. That didn't happen in a couple weeks. In fact, a fair amount of it might have been taken PHYSICALLY from Sony's servers.
Again... hack was in progress for more then a year.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Director James Comey said that while the attackers concealed their identify by using proxy servers, on occasion they "got sloppy" and made direct connections, exposing their true IP addresses; these indicated a North Korea origin.
Nation state hacking would be set up so that couldn't happen, this is more fabrication.
Lets hope it was Mr Comey that made the spelling error.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There absolutely is, you set up the system so that those sorts of errors can not occur.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I read here that they have a single IPv4 block.
At 100mb/s (with nothing else using it) it would take 3 months to download the "100TB" that is said to have been downloaded. At 10mb/s it would take 30 months. (All approximate). This is end-to-end bandwidth, including all of the hops in between, like these proxies (for when they weren't sloppy).
Probably about as impossible as North Korea having the entire network map, certificates, and hardcoded passwords in their script they used. One? Maybe. All three? No a fucking chance.
So, you realize that releasing information could give away the techniques used to gather said data. And, in doing so, allow those targeted to take steps to prevent such collection.
Now, if you don't believe these agencies should be collecting info from countries like DPRK, I can't help you. And, I'm not trying to defend anything regarding collection of metadata on non-military/citizens. But, if you acknowledge that intelligence gathering against enemies is an necessity, then you have to accept that some things simply can not be released.
Just another day in Paradise
I made the original comment you are replying to.
Thanks for the reply, and you are correct and I was mistaken: Rushdie did in fact make the comment before the murders in France. However, I happen to follow him on Twitter, and if you read his posts regarding the Charlie Hebdo attacks, you can see that he directly supports Charlie Hebdo. In fact, he "retweeted" the quote I used and taggged it with Charlie Hebdo, which is why I thought he had made it recently.
Regarding these global issues of Westernization, I cannot speak with any authority or even rudimentary knowledge on Indian affairs, but I can say I believe that the freedom of speech is a human right, not simply a Western concept that we must be careful not to push on others (as others have stated in many popular debates going on today). I also believe, speaking as an American, that it's our duty (and everyone's duty) to criticize ourselves before we criticize others, because we at least have the ability to do something about that. Beyond that, it ought to be made clear that we (as individuals) stand for human rights whever the humans in question are. In a nutshell, I agree with Salman Rushdie.
James Clapper mentioned recently meeting the Kim Yong Chol, the North Korean general in charge of cyberwarfare. Clapper emphasized Kim's belligerence and lack of a sense of humor, implying that an advance screening of "The Interview" would likely have enraged and provoked the North Korean brass."
Maybe Kim just doesn't like being lied to?
Like I believe the FBI, that the hackers "got sloppy". They did that good a job, *then* got sloppy? There's no chance, of course, that whoever actually did it *delberately* put those false trails in, no, no....
mark
For example you can't be filming in the United States and commit actual crimes, like robbing a bank and then filming it in order for a movie.
I think you are confused. Actually, filming a real bank robbery (even if you film it yourself) is perfectly fine. The mere act of filming your action (e.g., the bank robbery) does not make the crime legal, however. I doubt that such a film can even be excluded as evidence against you by self incrimination since the camera is not you (although it may be more difficult to establish a chain of custody). People get caught on "tape" by their own security cameras all the time and that is not problem as far as I know.
For the most part, there is no laws in the US to control what people should make movies about. The only filming that appears to be out of bounds today from a legal point of view is child pornography and sadly the laws against this do not stop it either...
Consider that the initial compromise might have required immense logistical resources that tends to be beyond those available to a teenage script kid. Like the hole might have to be found and penetrated by an adult with a computer science degree working all day, every day, for months. Criminal organizations have those resources applied to money-making efforts, but not for the 'lulz' of posting embarassing corporate emails online. Script kids are able to work on their attacks a few hours a day outside of school hours, etc.
It's wildly believable to me that North Korea could have hired outside talent to work on this and once the locks were broken, the data gathering was performed by less-skilled in-house technicians who might have been sloppy.
Don't forget, the member of lulzsec who brought that group down screwed up just once by connecting to IRC directly instead of through TOR and revealing his IP address.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Not the same AC.
The US government did it. It's a false flag operation designed to:
1: Gain support for actions against North Korea.
2: Allow the creation of new "cyber crimes" and tougher penalties against hackers and leakers. This is the "digital 9/11", and we're all going to lose a lot of freedom in its name. Such hacks and leaks will be declared actions of war. Future Snowdens and Assanges will have no where to hide. They will be executed outright via drone or bagged and tortured to be made an example of before being trotted out in a highly publicized farce of a trial to dispense "justice", ultimately ending in "suicide".
Sony wasn't just a patsy - they met with the powers that be many months before this happened and arranged everything carefully. Enough employee info would be leaked to make the attack look real and enough juicy info (about executives insulting celebrities) would be drip fed to the media to keep people's attention. Sony won't be out of business as a result of any lawsuits brought forward after the leaked data. There was never going to be any big reveal on Christmas. There were never any threats against Sony employees, movie theaters, or movie goers.
During the invasion: yellow cake and aluminum tubes
After the invasion: mobile biological labs
Yeah I see your point, it was totally always about WMD.
Due to the Smith Mundt Act, the US government was forbidden from targeting its citizens with false propaganda. The propaganda had to at least be believable given what the government actually knows. In 2013 the Smith Mundt act was amended to remove the requirement for plausibility. In other words: It's open season for propagandists to lie to the public in order to better Manufacture Consent.
Given this recent blatant reduction in requirement for honesty combined with proof of prior actions of the FBI, and Snowden's revelations about GCHQ / NSA methods for manipulation of online discourse, I think it's safe to assume it could be any one of the US government agencies peddling the BS.
IMO, it looks like the USA is trying to keep up with Russia, et. al. on the propaganda front, and North Korea is going to be one of the the new prominent boogie men since their new leader might have his head screwed on tighter than his father.
If things like the French coup against fascists, and the recent #GamerGate scandal have shown us anything, it's that when you try to censor art it really gets the fans attention. From a statecraft standpoint the propaganda is executed quite well, however, from a technical standpoint it's utterly flawed in that we can see so much evidence that this was an inside job: From the ~5000 employees Sony recently laid off (including their entire digital division), hardcoded file paths in the attack code, the data transfer rate of the files at USB speeds, etc.
Thus, this seems like an organic co-opting, not a "grand" preconceived conspiracy. E.g., "Hey, how can we use this disgruntled Sony 'hacker' to our advantage? Well, it fits with our anti-NK propaganda, and the media thinks this might be retaliation, let's run with it by giving them more credence with a FBI report... Shit, most knowledgeable IT staff believed us, and they're telling their friends, what should we do? Put out another press release hinting at nebulous "proof" that it was NK? Scan the IP address logs, Sony's a big company it's got to have SOME traffic from there, right?"
Of course, as a rationalist I don't believe anything 100%, but this seems like the most reasonable explanation given the information at hand.
I'm sure all the Windows boxes they are running over there are completely legit, properly licensed, and fully patched...
I'll only accept it as evidence if it shows Neil shot first.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
we're saying the same thing. if you rob an actual bank in the course of filming a movie, you're breaking a law - bank robbery. I did not phrase my OP well. tbh I dictated the whole post via siri dictation so it kind of came out garbled. maybe even some verb tenses got changed, I don't know.
No. A lot of people don't believe North Korea did it. 100 tb, with cans and string? It's just not possible. Downloading 100tb would kill the whole countries internet for a year.
Especially when they know the FBI wouldn't want to look further, and it's a logical thing to do. There are a lot of explanations. Most likely it was chan related. North Korea just doesn't have the resources to pull that off. If it wasn't 100tb of data, I would still be skeptical, but I would probably be more willing to accept more some of these stories better.
Sure, they get sloppy, but this just defies logic on every level. It will take iron clad evidence with third party collaboration to convince most people this could possibly have been North Korea.
And downloading 100tb of data over dial up. Don't forget that.
Clapper: “We could see that the IP addresses that were being used to post and to send e-mails were coming from IPs that were exclusively used by the North Koreans.”
Is he claiming that the NSA was watching the attack and data exfiltration while it was happening? Could they or should they have stopped it?
Sure, they get sloppy, but this just defies logic on every level.
What defies logic? Do you not believe North Korea has the ability or motivation to hack Sony as a result of this movie's production and imminent release (or for any other reason that regime may have given how much logic they appear to employ in their decisions)? Unless you believe the North Koreans were incapable of performing the hack, then there is no problem with logic, only that the evidence that you have personally seen doesn't meet what you demand in order to satisfy you of their likely guilt.
The real problem with your statement is this part:
It will take iron clad evidence with third party collaboration to convince most people this could possibly have been North Korea.
First, note your telling use of the word "possibly", not even the word "probably".
Unless you had a bunch of surveillance cameras watching every move as a hack was done, and probably not even then, "iron clad evidence" doesn't exist in this virtual world of the Internet. No matter what evidence is collected, someone will say it could have been faked, misinterpreted, or lied about, and technically they are right. This means the standards you say most people will demand in order to believe North Korea was the driving force behind this are not obtainable, even if North Korea is guilty. Of course the same holds true for evidence in any crime, which is why in the US the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, not as I have heard many say, beyond a shadow of a doubt. The first is obtainable, the second isn't, after all, for any given crime, prove that advanced space aliens didn't do it and create all the evidence to implicate the accused, including planting false memories? At some point the evidence is convincing and you believe the implicated party is guilty, at least for those who don't have a need to believe otherwise. If all you see is conspiracy theories, then that is the lens you will use to interpret everything, and bend the interpretation to what you desire the reality to be.
Perhaps you never saw Naked Gun 2 1/2? Team America? If I really felt like it, I could dig up quite a few comedies where we assassinate the living leader of a country that is considered to be the bad guy. Strangely, you think you're unique and this occasion was unique. Not going to go on about free speech but the irony is pretty intense when you consider the lack of human rights in North Korea.
I'd love to see what would happen if someone made a movie about the assassination of Obama, while he is still in office, and how the assassination is really funny.
I can't believe that the Secret Service would just turn a blind eye to it on the grounds of 'free speech'. My suspicion is that just writing the screenplay for such a movie would attract a lot of unwanted attention from several 3-letter agencies in the USA.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
No. A lot of people don't believe North Korea did it. 100 tb, with cans and string? It's just not possible. Downloading 100tb would kill the whole countries internet for a year.
That is like saying since I own a Fiat, I could not possibly have been the party who burglarized a warehouse and stole a lot of boxes of goods. Sure they may not fit in my car, but perhaps I employed another larger vehicle to do the work, perhaps one I "borrowed" from someone else without their knowledge or permission? Oh, you looked at my house and decided almost none of the boxes could fit through any of its doors which surely proves I am not the crook? Perhaps I took them somewhere else I had access to and stored them there, like another warehouse with poor or no security. Who said the hackers must have sucked all the data back to their source location directly over over their Internet link?
These days it's not an unreasonable assumption that the NSA intercepts, collects, and stores every frame of IP data routed through any publicly addressable router on planet Earth. I don't think it would really be giving anything away to disclose some packet logs.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Nothing happened to the people that made the exact movie you describe about Bush.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Learn the difference between government stifling your speech and moderators on a private website modding your posts down (not even deleting them, which would also be different from government censorship).
This so-called freedom is speech and expression is a load of crock
Why don't you just move to North Korea? You can have all the hurt feelings laws you want in that authoritarian hellhole.
In all fairness, the ability to access the data isn't necessarily the same as knowing what to look for. If I tell the world how I caught you breaking into my network, you also potentially know where you screwed up so you can avoid making the same mistake in the future. That's not to say they shouldn't tell us why, or provide enough reasonable evidence without tipping their entire hand. In some ways it mirrors other problems of disclosure in the network security realm. The hackers read the same stuff we do. That doesn't mean you never disclose, you just don't do so unthinkingly.
I do hope they cough up more information though. I'm curious to know why he's so confident, since high confidence attribution is normally very difficult from a given breach/incident.
Not only that but they're suggesting that the NSA doesn't have as good a tap on the global networking infrastructure as Edward Snowden revealed.
Think again about whether it's easier to agitate for funding against a perceived military threat or a bunch of script kiddies ripping off credit card numbers. If you had a choice which squeaky wheel would you pick to demand some oil?
So according to Clapper, the North Koreans connected to Sony's network through proxies, except when they didn't, also we're still trying to determine how the North Koreans accessed Sony's network. Clapper just sounds completely out of his depth here, no clue about what went on and probably doesn't even understand the briefings he will have been given.
Why should the FBI release the evidence? It's common not to release information on an unresolved case. In the meantime, I really don't need to know who hacked Sony.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
1. North Korea managed to develop an acceptable army of hackers on their own in 5 years. (No internet in 2009, supposedly)
The same way the VPAF (North Vietnam) went from no air force in 1959 to a combat capable air force flying Russian jet fighters in 1964... They sent their pilots to be trained in the Soviet Union.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Network speeds if it's over the network.
USB speed if it's USB, and you're SITTING THERE AND DOING IT LOCALLY. And then you take the copied data away. Because you'd be an insider.
Are you getting it yet? No?
Okay. And if you reached the machine over the network and it had a USB drive attached? It would be network speeds because it's...
[audience in unison]
OVER! THE! NETWORK!
I stand by the many findings outlined on Schneier's blog. The huge preponderance of evidence points to an insider. There is a LOT more in play than the USB speeds, but you want to take up one point I cited and rest all of your rebuttals on it? Just that ONE?
But _you_ told _me_ to "think" before replying. [sigh]
As you will not, for whatever reason, Google the terms, here's the link.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
Read it, or don't and continue to debate me on one example I quoted. Knock yourself out, deep thinker.
Hell even more joy.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
http://www.foodnetwork.com/rec...!
You do realise that 'Gulf War I' was an unjust war too, right?
Well, that is one viewpoint. Good luck convincing most people that it would have been a good idea to allow Saddam to conquer any neighboring country whose military was too weak to stop him.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
What would really answer the question, especially after this "got sloppy" speech, would be a statistically significant blip in the purging of hackers in North Korea, versus the level of giggling from hackers in Russia.
Bob Stein, http://bobste.in
I'm a 32nd-degree Master Mason and I promise we had nothing to do with this... really. Absolutely nothing. Not a blip.
It is an IP address. If they cannot muster proof that the attack and IP's are incontrovertible proof, then all the posturing about NK attacking the US is BS. Would you go to war based off of data on an invisible enemy?
We were very confident in building up weapons of mass destruction claims to provoke an excuse for war with Iraq.
Turns out faulty evidence was faulty. My theory is if they can't share evidence that is proof then they can't go to war.
Actually, there _were_ WMD's (chemical weapons) in Iraq: left over from pre Gulf War I/Desert Storm. However, it's been covered up (even to our troops) since it doesn't match the narrative http://www.nytimes.com/interac...
So, you realize that releasing information could give away the techniques used to gather said data. And, in doing so, allow those targeted to take steps to prevent such collection.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
As things stand, the majority of Americans who care about this are willing to accept that the North Koreans did this. The Venn Diagram showing People Accepting This + People Who Have Technical Knowledge of This Area seems to be a null set. (Please keep in mind that saying publicly "X is the Gospel truth" and believing it are two different things.)
The people in charge of communicating this information seem fine with that. They probably have spent enough time and energy to insure that this story doesn't play major havoc with any coming election that they have a reasonable amount of confidence in that outcome. Some substantial percentage of the people running this show really only care about that, about the "average" public perception in the voting population. The second set of individuals from the above cited diagram are just not satisfied. Chances are this group will not be satisfied until the powers that be decide it is worth their while to provide genuine evidence in lieu of the narrative, innuendo or circumstantial evidence proffered so far.
So, maybe doing that would be disastrous. Or, maybe, it would simply lead to a different approach by bad actors that would then have to be dealt with by the "Good Guys" (ie, hackers on our payrolls) which means it wouldn't be easy, and there would be financial cost associated with it. Or, presumably, not. I mean, I would hope we actually have people on staff who are paying attention to this area, anyway. If they have to do a little more work to deal with a modified tactic, doesn't that seem like it might make us more safe, rather than less? Why is it better that they should maintain a status quo that apparently did not keep us all safe from this in the first place?
Which may make it sound like I have a rather cavalier attitude about security. I do not. But, I do have confidence in a well motivated counter-force's ability to maintain a secure environment, given a decent management structure. So far, I am not seeing that in this so much as I am seeing the marketing department trying to tamp it down.
--- Say something clever. Pretend it was me. Thanks.