>The most damning argument is, as mentioned in the article, that the NK+The Interview conclusion was not mentioned by the attackers until the media started spec

>The most damning argument is, as mentioned in the article, that the NK+The Interview conclusion was not mentioned by the attackers until the media started speculating. This is technically true but the full situation is more complicated. First, it is difficult to know which of the Pastebins were really made by the hackers and which were made by copycats/trolls. Second, the media began speculating about the connection to The Interview one day after the hack, Nov. 25. Some probably the day of. The hackers only explicitly mentioned The Interview ("Stop immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War!") on Dec. 8. However, between Nov. 25 and Dec. 8 they released a number of dumps and messages addressing Sony, the public, and the media, while not mentioning The Interview at all. So if they wanted to jump on the sensationalism bandwagon, in my opinion it would have made more sense to start hinting at the movie specifically before Dec. 8. Of course, they may have randomly decided to wait that long for any number of reasons. Third, I think "Guardians of Peace" is a pretty clear allusion to "protecting the peace [by preventing the release of this terroristic movie]", which they made quite clear in later statements, including in statements before the Dec. 8 mention of the movie. And they used the name Guardians of Peace from day one. "Guardians of Peace" simply doesn't line up with the disgruntled insider or hacktivist hypotheses at all. This does not at all mean it was North Korea, but in my opinion it means the perpetrators either used The Interview as a motive, or as a pretext, from day 1. There are many possible explanations as to why this could have really been North Korea and why they did not explicitly mention the movie until Dec. 8. There are certainly many explanations as to why it could mean it isn't North Korea, but it's not damning evidence at all.