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North Korea, Denying Sony Attack, Proposes Joint Investigation With U.S.

91 pointsby fivedogitover 10 years ago

25 comments

crdoconnorover 10 years ago
Reasons for pretending that North Korea did it rather than a disgruntled ex-employee:<p>Sony executives:<p>* Sony gets tons of free publicity for its new movie.<p>* It diverts attention away from those emails that were starting to make certain Sony execs look really bad.<p>* They don&#x27;t look quite so hopeless and incompetent if they&#x27;re getting hacked by a nation state.<p>FBI&#x2F;CIA&#x2F;NSA&#x2F;DOD:<p>* It&#x27;s something that can be used to deflect heavy criticism of their all-pervasive surveillance.<p>* It&#x27;s something they can use to wangle more money - to face the exciting new &quot;cyberwar&quot; threat.<p>Reasons for North Korea denying involvement if they actually did it:<p>...
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splikeover 10 years ago
I find this whole thing really weird, and I suspect sites like reddit are being manipulated by someone.<p>Lets the timeline right<p>1. North Korea makes its disapproval of The Interview public and complains to the UN in the summer of this year<p>2. Sony is hacked and passwords are leaked. The passwords are the focus of the story<p>3. A couple of days go by, no mention of North Korea or The Interview<p>3.5 I&#x27;ve gotta be missing something here<p>4. Theaters (not Sony directly) decide the pull The Interview because of threats from NK<p>5. FBI blames NK for sony hack<p>6. Obama gets involved (?????)<p>The sequence of events just makes no sense. Then there are sites like reddit that are completely consumed by the story. The number of posts about it is insane, and there is little skepticism about the bizarre sequence of events or the blaming of NK.
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Mobiu5over 10 years ago
Am I mistaken, or did the &quot;hacker group&quot; only mention The Interview AFTER the media proposed the connection? It seems like whoever hacked sony (edit: or somebody else!) just took advantage of an opportunity to cause some chaos. And the whole &quot;FBI confirms NK&quot; thing seems shady. None of this quite adds up.
lotsofmangosover 10 years ago
I&#x27;ve said this elsewhere, but if this whole thing was perpetrated by the North Korean state because of the potential offence to North Korea from showing their leader being killed, why has the scene of their leader being killed been leaked by the hackers supposedly controlled by North Korea and is now posted all over reddit?
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blueflowover 10 years ago
I have some trust issues on that topics, it wouldn&#x27;t be the first time they made something up.<p>And its just in time to distract from the CIA report.
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saranagatiover 10 years ago
im really not one for conspiracy theories but this one just seems so obvious.<p>* sony gets hacked.<p>* a few news articles about it.<p>* cia torture facilities get leaked and admitted.<p>* news coverage all over about it.<p>* US federal government does something its never done before and calls out a specific nation state as the attacker for the sony breach.<p>* news coverage of sony skyrockets and cia stuff disappears from media.<p>* us government goes on to say that they need to increase their &quot;cyber defense&quot; by having more control over the internet to protect individuals and companies from other nation states.<p>edit: oh also wasnt it just earlier this week that there was an article on hn about sock puppets?
sopooneoover 10 years ago
If it really was North Korea, why would they deny it? Doesn&#x27;t an act of retaliation require the perpetrator to take credit in order for it to have any benefit to them? Or could it be that North Korea is publicly denying it with the understanding that everyone really knows it&#x27;s them?
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UhUhUhUhover 10 years ago
This whole deal really looks like a chess move (and a pretty good one too) more than a pissed-off reaction. This feels Russian to me.
dschiptsovover 10 years ago
Oh, come on. There is a simple theory that &quot;all oversimplified&#x2F;naive theories are wrong&quot; (this is, by the way, a consequence of &quot;all mental theories are wrong, but some of them are useful).<p>The theory that North Korea was upset about a crappy movie and hacked Sony is such a naive nonsense, it cannot be considered seriously. In is HN, after all.)<p>Less naive could an idea that some guys hacked Sony (for money, what else?) and used this as a &quot;cover story&quot;. How does this happen? By a chance, like most events in Universe.<p>The hack itself, probably, was due to neglected security, like WEP hot-spots, unpatched Windows crap, everyone has Administrator privileges, updates disabled - everyone knows how it is.<p>And in order to &quot;save the face&quot; everyone jumped on that naive story - it is highly sophisticated hack by foreign intelligence, not an &quot;admin&quot; (or &quot;fuck&quot;) password on some hotspot or Windows domain. It was a media division, btw, not a &quot;techie&quot; department.<p>I am exaggerating a bit about passwords, but the idea, I hope, is clear.
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cyorirover 10 years ago
Would North Korea even have an interest in attacking a company like Sony Pictures in this way? Normally, when a nation-state goes for a cyber attack, they go after useful targets. For example, they go after a government to get an upper hand in negotiations, or maybe they go after industry or academia, to secure knowledge about some helpful technology. Sony pictures would not be a canonical target for a nation-state, because they really don&#x27;t have much to offer a state like North Korea (it&#x27;s not like this attack will help the struggling North Korea film industry). In contrast, there would be more for North Korea to lose if the US retaliates.<p>I can&#x27;t quite understand the allegation that NK is behind this because I don&#x27;t see a motive.
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fivedogitover 10 years ago
OP here. This thing is confusing the hell out of me. I go back and forth on a daily basis as to whether I think it was the NKoreans or not. One major factor in my head that I haven&#x27;t heard stated elsewhere is this: If the government says today &quot;It was North Korea&quot; and tomorrow a hacker group says &quot;Lulz! It was us. Gotcha!&quot;, that makes the FBI&#x2F;CIA&#x2F;NSA look <i>really, really</i> bad. Bad enough that it would outweigh any benefits to blaming the NKors. Why would the feds go out on a limb like that if they weren&#x27;t absolutely sure?
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totonyover 10 years ago
Too much NK bashing. Just because a state is recluse and has barely any relation with other states doesn&#x27;t mean we can just speculate and blame them for everything without <i>real</i> proof.
robertszkutakover 10 years ago
&quot;While some computer experts still express doubts whether the North was actually behind the attack, American officials said it was similar to what was believed to be a North Korean cyberattack last year on South Korean banks and broadcasters. One key similarity was the fact that the hackers erased data from the computers, something many cyberthieves do not do.&quot;<p>I won&#x27;t pretend to be an expert on information security but surely this isn&#x27;t anywhere close to being unique enough to point blame at North Korea?
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joesmoover 10 years ago
I can&#x27;t wait to see this movie now, not because I think it&#x27;ll be great but just because of the controversy surrounding it. Especially if Sony doesn&#x27;t officially release it, I find it extremely ironic that so called hackers are the ones threatening Sony (which is a dubious claim at best) and hackers will likely be the ones to get it &quot;released,&quot; considering Sony&#x27;s lackluster (at best) security.
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frevdover 10 years ago
An indirect proof of who hacked Sony is easy: depending on whether the &#x27;Hackers&#x27; publish the movie or not (given they got access to it and given Sony does not publish it as they say) will show who&#x27;s behind it.
maxharrisover 10 years ago
Nothing that North Korea says should be treated as though it were legitimate. This is a country that keeps something on the order of a quarter of a million people in actual concentration camps, and tens of millions more utterly brainwashed and in unspeakable poverty. This is now, today, in 2014.<p><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2565240/Voices-damned-These-horrifying-stories-concentration-camp-victims-reveal-chilling-clarity-week-North-Korea-likened-Nazi-Germany.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;article-2565240&#x2F;Voices-damne...</a><p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/02/north-koreas-horrors-as-shown-by-one-defectors-drawings/283899/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;international&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;nor...</a><p><a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/19/eight-sketches-of-life-inside-north-koreas-prison-camps-that-will-haunt-you/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theblaze.com&#x2F;stories&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;19&#x2F;eight-sketches-of...</a>
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krickover 10 years ago
Literally every day now I run across something mentioning &quot;Sony hack&quot;, but haven&#x27;t understood yet why it&#x27;s so significant topic. It seems to gather way more attention than I imagine something like this should. Every now and then somebody gets &quot;hacked&quot;, sometimes it&#x27;s somebody pretty big, it&#x27;s not that uncommon that some really important data gets leaked, but it never goes further than mentioning it on HN or something, no jokes about it on 9gag, no North Koreas joining investigation. What&#x27;s the matter?<p>Maybe it&#x27;s because I missed original news. Can somebody provide link or explanation why the heck it&#x27;s so important that even completely non-technical people buzz about it all the time?
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joelrunyonover 10 years ago
A few questions:<p>1. Does NK even have the capability to pull something like this off? They seemingly fail at every other intimidation stunt they pull off &amp; now they have a massive success out of nowhere? Hm...<p>2. Why would they deny it if they did it? It&#x27;s very out of character for them to not pounce on the chance of something being very embarrassing to the US.<p>3. With all the talk of it being so complicated to pinpoint exactly where the attacks came from, what info is the US gov using to pin this on NK (besides the very easy narrative around the context of the movie). They have to have a bit more intel than they&#x27;re letting on...or something is fishy here.
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nkorenover 10 years ago
Translation: &quot;We have no idea how this attack was perpetrated, but would sure like to find out.&quot;<p>(Nudge nudge, wink wink, you know what I mean, know what I mean?)
thatusertwoover 10 years ago
Does it really matter who did this?<p>The future of the internet is changed as a result of this event, thats the true meat of this situation.
blazespinover 10 years ago
The Russians or NK could have secretly hired Chinese hackers to make it look like NK. Now they can embarrass the U.S. for jumping the gun like they did in Iraq and weapons of mass destruction (assuming the connection can not be proved).
exabrialover 10 years ago
I think there are more important things to worry about...
hoooover 10 years ago
If NK did hack them, a joint investigation would be great as they&#x27;d learn what techniques the US used to identify NK.
jdawg77over 10 years ago
When was the last time most, if not all, of the community here hung out with a guy or gal from the Foreign Service? Or better yet a member of the State Department of the USA?<p>Or the equivalent in their home country; that&#x27;s just as well, given that the people I&#x27;ve met all over the world who work in their country&#x27;s foreign service department are generally good people.<p>If you haven&#x27;t seen, &quot;A Beautiful Mind,&quot; it&#x27;s a great film and the math literally helps explain why North Korea, despite evidence, might be a, &quot;Sock puppet,&quot; used by...well, let&#x27;s see.<p>What country is having a really, really crappy time with economic sanctions right now?<p>Maybe, just maybe, a bit of experience at interacting with the folks who (gasp) make these kinds of decisions would make the whole situation easier to explain. Or if most of us simply revisit kindergarten in the US, eg, the game of, &quot;Tag.&quot; Remember how to claim a cookie that you&#x27;re not supposed to eat?<p>Touch it. &quot;If I touch it, I own it,&quot; because nobody wants to eat the cookie you touched after you liked your finger, right? So, Russia perhaps, &quot;Licks their finger,&quot; tunnels through, and then when we discover the breach, &quot;Look, it&#x27;s the North Koreans!&quot;<p>If not them, I&#x27;d say Luxembourg is behind it all. We know most American companies that have operations overseas use them to launder (I mean, mitigate) tax burdens in Europe, right?
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ohsnapover 10 years ago
Anyone else frustrated that you can&#x27;t have a conversation about this without the vast majority of threads taking on a conspiratorial tone? I suppose it&#x27;s human nature for something with such power players as Sony&#x2F;FBI&#x2F;NK to seek out hidden motives and what not - but the comment quality really drops off.
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