Slashdot Mirror
NSA Hack of N. Korea Convinced Obama NK Was Behind Sony Hack
Mike Lape links to a NYTimes piece which says "The evidence gathered by the 'early warning radar' of software painstakingly hidden to monitor North Korea's activities proved critical in persuading President Obama to accuse the government of Kim Jong-un of ordering the Sony attack, according to the officials and experts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the classified N.S.A. operation." From the linked article:
For about a decade, the United States has implanted “beacons,” which can map a computer network, along with surveillance software and occasionally even destructive malware in the computer systems of foreign adversaries. The government spends billions of dollars on the technology, which was crucial to the American and Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, and documents previously disclosed by Edward J. Snowden, the former security agency contractor, demonstrated how widely they have been deployed against China. ... The extensive American penetration of the North Korean system also raises questions about why the United States was not able to alert Sony as the attacks took shape last fall, even though the North had warned, as early as June, that the release of the movie “The Interview,” a crude comedy about a C.I.A. plot to assassinate the North’s leader, would be “an act of war.”
So, the US says North Korea attacked Sony. And the US knows this because it attacked North Korea years ago ...
Thank god people know now that the threat is North Korea hacking a movie company. This way, they can be freedom fighters just by watching a mildly funny movie with Mr. Rogen and Mr. Franco, which is both fun and easy.
Otherwise, they would have to assume that the threat to their freedom is more like a court approving a single warrant on the telecomm data of more than a million people. Or the CIA spying on the institution that is supposed to supervise them. Fighting these would be much less fun and easy, maybe even dangerous.
1. This is another "45 minute" claim of the sort that provided pretext for the Iraq war, isn't it? It might be true, or it might be misleading but have an element of truth, or it might be utter fiction. An intelligence agency is an agency of state security, and "state security" means working on behalf of state interests, and state interests tend not to coincide with the people's interests.
2. It might then be in the interests of the state to let the attack happen, so it can be used as an excuse to further state interests.
3. I don't know why people are getting their panties twisted about NK's typically sabre-rattling reaction, which we all know is 1 part "I'm a maniacal dictator" and 1 part "goad the Americans into reacting so we can use their reaction as internal propaganda proving them to be an on-going threat that necessitates our regime". How would the West feel about the release of a popular film in which the assassination of a living head of state is planned? How would your government behave toward you if YOU wrote a book / published a film / performed a play about this?
> There's nothing they could do or say that would convince the Slashdot crowd [...]
Not talking for "the Slashdot crowd" (whatever that might be [1]), but look: the NSA isn't an impartial party here -- and they're whoring for sympathy at the moment. Given its track record, *I* prefer to not trust anything it says.
--- ---
[1] To me it looks like a big honkin' strawman, but hey.
So they have a secret capability to spy on North Korea, and they tell us because Sony got hacked? So now North Korea knows about it and probably will do something about it? That sounds an incredibly stupid action to me.
In WWII, when the Brits cracked German encryption, the went to incredible lengths to create believable stories how they found secret German operations that they discovered through decrypted Enigma messages.
This isn't even about convincing the American public to support the NSA. It's about giving politicians talking points to justify the support they intend to continue to give.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Surely the most obvious answer is that this is an NSA hack, and they threw the blame at North Korea, because a) Snowden leak yesterday reveals NSA does these false flag ops. b) NSA is defending its mass surveillance charges so it needs a scapegoat right now. c) Sony is a TV company and thus good for marketing to have them on your side.
http://boingboing.net/2015/01/18/ecstatic-nsa-spooks-delight-in.html
"... they routinely seek to cover their tracks or to lay fake ones instead. In technical terms, the ROC lays false tracks as follows: After third-party computers are infiltrated, the process of exfiltration can begin -- the act of exporting the data that has been gleaned. But the loot isn't delivered directly to ROC's IP address. Rather, it is routed to a so-called Scapegoat Target. That means that stolen information could end up on someone else's servers, making it look as though they were the perpetrators. "
I will never believe anything a US government ever says, because they showed in the past that they can not be trusted and that this does not change with whatever party is in charge right now. It is just lies that come out of every official PR persons mouth. Without hard facts to back it up everything they say must be considered not true.
Snowden warns us that we're being spied on and that the grip the NSA has on the whole Internet goes far beyond what even the most paranoid had imagined and the US government answer is: espionage prosecution, international warrant etc.
Compare with: Unnamed NSA official, no doubt with the blessing of his bosses, anonymously reveals the same kind of information about NSA spying - but this time because it is convenient for the administration and it fits into their political agenda, there won't be any legal consequences, prosecutions etc., absolutely nothing will happen, we all know it - and even worse - we all passively accept it.
Laws are being selectively enforced by the government; there are no actually classified documents. There are "things the government wants you to know", those can be leaked and released on demand by "unnamed officials" - screw the legality of it - and there are "things the government doesn't want you to know", and anyone revealing those things will be spied on, harassed and prosecuted (James Risen? Laura Poitras?), it doesn’t matter that the people writing about those are journalists who have no duty of any kind towards the US government, they’re just doing their job.
If the administration has proof of North Korean involvement, they can present it to try to convince the American public... but wait, no they can’t. They can't do that because the evidence they have comes from the NSA exploiting and hacking systems all over the internet. "Yes, your honor, I saw it all, it was the North Koreans who painted that graffiti. How do I know? I was there that night, burying a few bodies in the empty lot next door".
The NSA giving actual proof of NK involvement is equivalent to them coming forward and admitting what they are: a threat far more dangerous for the security of the Internet than anything North Korea will ever be capable of.
admits to hacking NK first which they say can be considered an act of war just to let the world know NK commited a possible act of war? WTF?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
According to John McAfee, N. Korea had nothing to do with the Sony hack.
John McAfee says a lot of things and does a lot of things that seem pretty 'remarkable'. Either he is having one hell of a interesting life, or he is a pathological liar. It seems pretty convenient that he cannot even give this mystery group a name.
North Korea has a well established history of aggressive, belligerent behavior, and this sort of thing sounds right up their alley. John is going have to cough up a lot more evidence than his good word that an agency with thousands of people and billions of dollars in hardware devoted keeping an eye on a rouge nation is wrong.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Spying on another country does not constitute an attack; bringing down its systems would be an attack. Like bringing down a company's computer systems would be an attack. (Spying on US companies by network infiltration has been going on for decades, including defense contractors; to my knowledge, while that spying was frowned on, it hasn't been labeled an attack.)
It's also the case that North Korea is technically still at war with South Korea, which is an ally of ours. And it has attacked boats in international waters. And it has nukes, which it has threatened to use on other countries, including Japan (another US ally) and the US. And it has rockets capable of achieving orbit, which could in principle be used to deliver those nukes. I don't say that any of these are plausible imminent threats, but it would be foolish of the US not to use all means it can--short of attacks--to keep track of the reality behind the threats.
Whereas Sony is an entertainment company.
A.) He didn't bring anything down, just told us what we already knew. The only result is that the IT community looks a lot less like tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists.
B.) So, our allies' communications and infrastructure are now considered "behind enemy lines"?
C.) I really do feel slightly safer now, you criminal organization apologist/sympathizer.