4 ms·

I 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 r

by j4pe 12y ago

I 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 ago
  I 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.
- j4pe 12y ago
  Noticing incentive structure common to a government can be helpful in making judgements like that, but I'd wager that anthropomorphizing an organization with >20k employees as a single persona would do more harm than good to my predictive ability. I was asking more in a technical sense - are these comments coming from somebody with no knowledge of network security, or from an expert? Regardless, we now have much more information.

by j4pe 12y ago

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 ago
I 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.

j4pe 12y ago
Noticing incentive structure common to a government can be helpful in making judgements like that, but I'd wager that anthropomorphizing an organization with >20k employees as a single persona would do more harm than good to my predictive ability. I was asking more in a technical sense - are these comments coming from somebody with no knowledge of network security, or from an expert? Regardless, we now have much more information.