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US Links North Korea to Sony Hacking
- xnull2guest 12y agoThis is the new normal. The US government does this, the French do this, the Chinese do this, Syria does this, North Korea does this... etc. As with other new frontiers of geopolitical leverage there will be a painful learning and a growing period for the internet. There's so many ways it could turn out and I fluctuate between being hopeful and pessimistic and what I will temporarily think is 'realistic'.
- gizmo686 12y agoI must have missed alot, what are other instances of attacks like this? We are not talking about espionage or theft, the Sony attack was plain malice. The only prior examples I can think of are private activists (eg Anonomous) or major tactical targets (eg nuclear centrifuges).
- xnull2guest 12y agoWe differ in that I would group this action together with espionage and sabotage, but if you are looking for other examples of nation state sponsored 'malice' attacks the Syrian Electronic Army's ("state-supported") attack of Ebay, Paypal, Ferrari, Walmart, media organizations, security companies, government twitter accounts, and Microsoft (and others) are examples of attacks that are meant to hurt reputation and cause chaos more than they were about data or finance.
- mtmail 12y agoAnd they say North Korean hacking is often done from China. And the US tries actively to infiltrate North Korean computers... Sorry, I don't trust any source, it's just finger pointing. Wired offers a different perspective of the same story http://www.wired.com/2014/12/north-korea-did-not-hack-sony-probs/ http://www.wired.com/2014/12/north-korea-did-not-hack-sony-p...
- BillFranklin 12y agoSilver lining is it's incredible press for The Interview, excellent crisis management by Sony's PR people. Apart from this Wired article all I've read is PR and political finger pointing.
- jonnathanson 12y agoIncredible press for a movie whose release they just canceled? The movie's getting a hell of a lot of attention; I'll grant you that. But I don't see how this helps the movie. I know a lot of people are speculating that Sony has something up its sleeve, like a limited-time-only release right after Xmas, or early next year, or a digital release, etc. I'd consider that an extraordinarily slim to nil outside possibility. The material leaked in the Sony hack does not exactly give the impression that these guys are marketing geniuses. Just sayin'. :) For what it's worth -- not saying you're suggesting this, just that I've now heard the theory a couple dozen times -- some people are speculating that Sony engineered this entire fiasco as a publicity stunt for the movie. That sort of thinking is beyond-the-pale naive. Sony doesn't want to be civilly or criminally liable for having doxxed thousands of its own employees. Believe me.
- 001sky 12y agoThe vituperative nature def. does not seem like a PR stunt gone awry. The flip side is the US may want to blame a state because they don't know who did it.
- foobarian 12y agoThe movie was unlikely to make much money and was risking the other, more major releases. I bet they will release it later in the new year with excellent financial results.
- jonnathanson 12y agoThey may well attempt to rerelease it, and its notoriety may attract a decent opening weekend. But notoriety alone won't save a turkey. If it's actually bad, this incident won't be able to turn around its long-term prospects. If it's good, that's a different story -- but if it were good, you'd think Sony wouldn't have pulled support so quickly in the first place.
- addedlovely 12y agoAnd there I was, thinking it was all for the lolz.
- jobu 12y ago"Much of North Korea’s hacking is done from China." If the hack was indeed state sponsored as this article claims (based on comments from unnamed intelligence officials), then it seems much more likely that the hack was done by Chinese hackers than North Korean.
- xienze 12y agoRight. I can certainly buy a joint China/NK venture with China providing the talent and resources, but I can't imagine NK has the ability to pull of any decent hacks.
- mpyne 12y agoThere are interesting "free speech" implications to this too. E.g. North Korea seems to have succeeded in scaring off all the major theater chains from showing "The Interview" in theaters.
- jonah 12y agoI've been getting a kick out of North Korea's response: "Nah, we didn't do it, but who ever did, righton! <thumbsup>"
- MichaelGG 12y agoThat's a lot of people's response. Sony Pictures does bad things, so while I have to say "this kinda thing shouldn't be done", at least it happened to a deserving company.
- agentutah 12y agoCan you give specifics? What bad things are you referring to?
- deciplex 12y agoInstalling rootkits on the machines of unsuspecting victims who foolishly purchased music CDs from them, for a start. Turnabout is fair play.
- bramgg 12y agoI had to look it up.. Holy shit 0_o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
- jonah 12y agoRemember, Sony Pictures is a different entity than Sony Music Entertainment.
- CamperBob2 12y agoSorry, not a valid point. Both entities use the name "Sony" for a reason: the goodwill associated with it. They have to accept the bad press along with the good.
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- aba_sababa 12y agoI really don't buy this. Attribution of anyone is incredibly difficult. It's easy for the US to officially point fingers and turn it into a geopolitical play. There is every incentive to do so: it's plausible, the media buys it, and it buys major points in the Us vs. Them narrative.
- higherpurpose 12y agoGet ready for the "we need to pass new cyber-laws to protect you" speeches. They're coming.
- memonkey 12y agoThis sends shivers down my spine. We already have net neutrality to worry about, no doubt the far right will be using this event to fear monger that kind of legislation.
- lawnchair_larry 12y agoUntrue. It can be difficult, but it's often not difficult at all.
- nikcub 12y ago> The attacks at Sony were routed from command and control centers across the world, including a convention center in Singapore and a computer at Thammasat University in Thailand. But one of those command and control servers, a computer in Bolivia, had been used before, in a limited set of cyberattacks on South Korean targets two years ago. The evidence has to be better than this to make an accusation against a state. Botnets overlap a lot because the way they are built is with automated scanners that take advantage of common vulnerabilities. It isn't uncommon to find a botnet client that has been hacked a half-dozen other times and has had rootkits installed each time. A large part of sophisticated botnet droppers is removing all the previously installed botnets on a server where a vulnerability has been found. Having one client in common with another attack network is a low or insignificant figure. Similar applies to common modules found in other malware. Authors reverse engineer and re-appropriate techniques or libraries from other successful malware all the time. That is also not evidence of a link to North Korea.
- webkike 12y agoDid you read the sentence literally right after your quoted text? > That suggests, but does not prove that that the same group or individuals may have been behind both attacks.
- jmeekr 12y agoThe implications of a US response to this hack are limited by how much evidence the intelligence agencies are willing to provide - it's unlikely that they would want to divulge the details around their own penetration to North Korean networks.
- revelation 12y agoThis article is glorious. A real goldmine for satire. The sudden urgency inside the administration over the Sony issue came after a new threat was delivered this week to desktop computers at Sony’s offices that if “The Interview” was released on Dec. 25, “the world will be full of fear.” It continued: “Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time.” Won't anyone think of .. national security?
- tokenadult 12y agoAmnesty International is fairly well known for encouraging private citizens like you and like me to write letters to government officials of governments that hold "prisoners of conscience." I have done this before, and I should do this more often. When I lived in Taiwan in the early 1980s, under the former dictatorship there, I actually spoke in public at a speech contest for foreign students on the occasion of Sun Yat-sen's birthday on how much Taiwan then didn't live up to the ideals of the 1911 revolution in China as proclaimed by Sun. I have got to look up how to join more direct communication to the reclusive government of north Korea, in my own name, recording my own return address, and making clear that I will not be pushed around by a regime of thugs. I have recently been following the suggestion of another Hacker News participant and have read the three-volume history of the Nazi regime by Richard Evans, the Third Reich trilogy. Evans notes in various places in his books that even the Nazis were responsive to international opinion on some issues. In the early period of the Nazi regime, Hitler used to receive personal letters from American eugenicists and segregationists who praised the policies of his regime. I don't want my not saying anything at all to be construed as consent or as fear of indicating disagreement with a dictator. I will have to openly and frequently express my disagreement with the world's remaining dictators until they all fall. The North Korea Now website http://www.northkoreanow.org/take-action-now/get-your-voice-heard/ http://www.northkoreanow.org/take-action-now/get-your-voice-... provides advice on how to write letters that may have influence on the regime there. Sure enough, one part of the advice is to write to China, the country that does the most to prop up Kim Jung-un's regime. A letter to be broadcast by Free North Korea Radio http://www.northkoreanow.org/now-accepting-letters-from-america-a-special-program-for-u-s-americans/ http://www.northkoreanow.org/now-accepting-letters-from-amer... might also help. A Washington Post editorial from October 2014 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/north-koreas-leaders-must-be-held-to-account-for-human-rights-abuses/2014/10/30/7e6026d4-603f-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/north-koreas-leaders-... lists other steps to take to express disagreement with the regime in north Korea.
- ievans 12y agoI found your comment to be very thought-provoking. There's a lot to make fun of with regards to North Korea (as "The Interview" obviously does) but the regime's human rights abuses are well-documented and horrifying. I hadn't considered that there might be something I could do personally, and I appreciated your historical example of how even the smallest individual expressions is not necessarily completely insignificant. It's certainly something I hope my ancestors would have done. Brings to mind Tolkein's letter to a publishing house in Germany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#Politics_and_race http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#Politics_and_r... So I'll write a letter--now seems like an excellent time, honestly.
- anw 12y agoThe problem with assuming... http://www.wired.com/2014/12/north-korea-did-not-hack-sony-probs/ http://www.wired.com/2014/12/north-korea-did-not-hack-sony-p... I find it funny how fast pop-media news jumps on top of a bandwagon without actual investigation. Earlier we were being told "North Korea is definitely behind this". Right now everyone is saying "North Korea is probably not behind this". Why bother with networks that just regurgitate information from other people? Don't push a point of view, just lay out actual facts and let the readers come to their conclusions as more information is made available.
- higherpurpose 12y agoIt's sad that most of mainstream media considers "getting semi-official government leaks" as "investigating" now, as if the government could never lie or anything. When your sources come from Joe Biden's right hand (just an example), you should be very suspicious.
- anw 12y agoI wouldn't even limit it to semi-official government leaks. For instance, New Gingrich said: > No one should kid themselves. With the Sony collapse America has lost its first cyberwar. This is a very very dangerous precedent.[1] > @RobLowe it wasn't the hackers who won, it was the terrorists and almost certainly the North Korean dictatorship, this was an act of war [2] So now we have uninformed rhetoric coming out from people who—unfortunately—may have their opinions viewed as credible due to their past as an elected official. This was a candidate for presidency in 2012. [1] https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122 https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122 [2] https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339504803196928 https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339504803196928
- j4pe 12y agoI was certain that the story of NK being the actor here was just publicity, paid for by Sony to promote the film and capitalize on their hacking disaster. The release cancellation nixed the idea that Sony was behind the threats, but it still didn't point to NK's culpability. Any lunatic could have bombed any theater in the country next week and Sony would have been liable. With these administration comments, is it more likely that NK was actually responsible? It's still possible that this will turn out to be the overblown suspicions of somebody unfamiliar with how digital attacks work, published too quickly because they fit the narrative. We've seen the state of journalistic fact checking lately, and even if this is the NYT, 'senior administration officials' isn't a bulletproof source. But it's also possible that we now live in an era where nations wage proxy digital war against corporations not just for theft but for ideology. This would be a strange new state of affairs. I wonder how long before corporations are fighting back? If, say, Samsung's expected value for government reconstruction contracts following NK's fall was in the tens of billions, how difficult would it be for them to cause a couple military installations, power plants, or leaders' flights to explode and make regime change more likely?
- josephlord 12y ago> Any lunatic could have bombed any theater in the country next week and Sony would have been liable. Source? The bomber would be liable but why would Sony be? (Provided that they informed at least law enforcement and certainly if they made the details of the threats public).
- j4pe 12y agoI meant that the probability of losing a civil suit, in the event that the threatened disaster occurred, was high enough to impose heavy cost on showing the film. Criminal liability would of course fall to the perpetrator. In retrospect, I was wrong - it was the theater chains who would be exposing to themselves to that risk, so they (very logically) cancelled their showings. As a result Sony was forced to pull the film's theater release.
- deciplex 12y ago> With these administration comments, is it more likely that NK was actually responsible? Less, in my view. It's true that if a liar says the sky is blue, that doesn't make the sky pink. However, if that liar is the United States government, it doesn't hurt to have a look out the window.
- AlyssaRowan 12y agoNot to put too fine a point on it, Sony's security practices were so negligent, anyone could have done it. The tools used were very unimpressive and easily available. The evidence linking this to any nation-state at all at the moment is incredibly weak, bordering on non-existent.
- higherpurpose 12y agoNot just "anyone", but there could've been multiple unrelated groups hacking them at once. Didn't they say there's some evidence of hacking from 2 years ago? Some of them could've just hacked them and Sony never found out about it.
- mkhalil 12y agoIf it was possible, I'd place a bet that the NSA know's who's responsible but likes to sit back and watch chaos unfold between the media and politicians.
- Shivetya 12y agoand North Korea likely has the means to reach out and get the actors too
- logn 12y agoWhen can we expect legislation mandating that the NSA secure all corporate networks?
- barce 12y agoThe last time a communist country did a hack like this was during the Cold War. The hackers were coke addicted West Berliners paid off by the KGB to infiltrate high value and key .mil servers. My guess is that this time it is no different. Read Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg and you'll see how very little for geopolitics of these attacks have changed.
- meritt 12y agoSony should use this opportunity to capitalize on a digital distribution model since they aren't going to release the film to theaters.
- grownseed 12y agoAs mentioned by others, there isn't any solid evidence here. I consider NYT one of the more reputable news sources out there (the bar is pretty low...), but this situation reminds me all too well of the following which I half-jokingly shared with a friend recently: How to be a media outlet in 5 easy steps: - do not provide any sources, at all, unless of course you're dogfooding - make bold claims based on hearsay, comments from random strangers and uneducated/irrelevant celebrities - judge and slander people before any researched verdict has been reached - spread lies and make them truths through mob behavior, then support your original lies by pointing to the "public consensus" - do not take responsibility for any of your actions, ever, unless it generates money and/or attention The repercussions of these half-assed "investigations" worry me to say the least.
- ianhawes 12y agoTMZ is reporting [1] that studio executives are convinced this was an inside job based on layoffs at Sony that included IT employees. Before you write them off, they've broken several big stories this year, and their sources at movie studios are probably spot on. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The continuous release of leaked data means the attacker probably had access for a considerable amount of time to completely download the large number of files. My guess is that they had escalated their own access during employment and routinely monitored the communications of executives. This was most likely the work of someone that had or maintained a blackhat past. This is someone that most likely had access to a botnet, knew where to go to buy/download malware (underground forums), and knew how to obscure their connections (and where to directly connect). And if you think about it, posting to Pastebin? Definitely a US-thing, and not so much a Chinese thing. I'm willing to bet this person/people will be caught through old-fashioned profiling. Cross-checking the terminated IT employees with previous convictions for computer crimes, their personal emails with known hacker aliases, and other investigative techniques. [1] http://www.tmz.com/2014/12/17/sony-hack-inside-job-north-korea-investigation/ http://www.tmz.com/2014/12/17/sony-hack-inside-job-north-kor...
- xnull2guest 12y agoWhy would #GOP demand that 'The Interview' not be shown? To throw off the scent? Also I'd be interested in your thoughts as to why an ex-employee bent on revenge demand a ransom not to engage in the sabotage?
- ianhawes 12y agoWhy would North Korea demand a ransom and then demand the movie not be shown? I think its more to embarrass Sony than anything.
- xnull2guest 12y agoI do think that the ransom makes the North Korea explanation less likely, unless NK reached out to #GOP after they were not given a ransom and offered to pay? The other explanation seems to be that #GOP would demand the movie not be shown to confuse the scent of their real motive (revenge? lulz?) (but this is also questionable IMO). It also seems unlikely that an ex-employee would use the same IPs from previous Korean state sponsored attacks, although maybe they could have bought access to these servers on underground forums? Others are suggesting that this is entirely invented evidence - I see no good reason to believe that.
- rtpg 12y agoThe counterpoint to this is presented in http://www.wired.com/2014/12/north-korea-did-not-hack-sony-probs/ http://www.wired.com/2014/12/north-korea-did-not-hack-sony-p... Namely that the attackers don't even mention the movie, but instead seem to be on an ant-Sony crusade. Mentions of the movie by the "attackers" only seem to start happening when people started saying it could be NK.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jqm 12y agoContrary to many posters, I think it's indeed very likely N. Korea was the origin of the attack. Disclaimer: I'm not pro war and generally not pro- US foreign policy. The events in Iraq were shameful. Our involvement in Libya and the so called Arab spring was shameful. Our involvement in Ukraine and general treatment of Russia has been deplorable and painful to watch. I think we should stop saber rattling at Iran who I believe would join the modern world much more quickly if they weren't being constantly threatened and undermined by a power that has done them some serious wrong in the past. The US's seemingly unconditional support of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states is unconscionable in my estimation. That being said, I feel differently about North Korea. I believe this country truly is dangerous and steps should be taken sooner vs. later to dis-empower it. I am genuinely worried worried about what might come from there in the next decade or two if things continue as they are. Just my opinions.
- coding4all 12y agoA long article with no evidence. Literally, there is no evidence in this article. I truly hope people still aren't this naive after an entire decade of this kind of "journalism".