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To be fair, there were other issues involved in the Sony hack that are not present in NSA spying. - The North Koreans attempted to impose a heckler's veto on s

To be fair, there were other issues involved in the Sony hack that are not present in NSA spying. - The North Koreans attempted to impose a heckler's veto on speech by private citizens of the United States. - The Sony hack had direct and very visible consequences for Americans (economic consequences, release of personal data like salaries and health information, embarrassment of people by releasing private communications). It's entirely possible to take the position that countries are going to engage in espionage, but that there should be norms about how intelligence services behave. Right now we're all trying to figure out what those norms are.

xnull1guest 12y ago
Thank you for mentioning international cyber operation norms. This is the center of US international cyberpolicy efforts. Ontologies describing categories of cyber operations often place destructive attacks like the one against SONY into a category of its own and these are usually considered fair only in very particular scenarios of provocation. An addendum here regarding 'free speech'. There is some question about The Interview being a propaganda effort on behalf of the US State Department (which was given a preview as early as July) since #GOP released emails where CEO Lynton discusses the effects of the ending with RAND Corporation strategist and nuclear deterrence specialist Bruce Bennett and Lynton confirmed analysis of its effectiveness with Senior State Department officials. (It also doesn't help that the script writer was asked specifically to consider changing his character from an anonymous leader of NK to Kim Jong-Un).
semperfaux 12y ago
"To be fair," there are norms about how intelligence services behave. That we, the proletariat, aren't aware of them doesn't make them any less real. That they've either changed or that we've only just discovered what they are doesn't say anything about what they are or used to be. "Norms" don't necessarily make things objectively or even subjectively better. They just make them standard. Asking for norms will get you absolutely nothing, even if you get what you ask for: They'll just establish what they're already doing as normal, and continue to not tell you about the new things they start doing. Because that's what intelligence is; if they told people what they were doing, for better or worse, people would make it harder for them to do.
- xnull1guest 12y ago
  The norms in question are those of cyber attacks. This includes but is not limited to intelligence operations. The SONY attack, for example, was not an intelligence operation. The downing of the Syrian airforce was not an intelligence operation. Nor was Stuxnet or the the Georgia cyberattack. Norms are important because they are precursors to law (in this case international law). Norms create ground upon which a country can accuse another, a ground upon which you can achieve consensus among many parties, and norms set expectations of behavior that if loosely followed every country can benefit from.
wavefunction 12y ago
I hold Sony primarily responsible for the release of private data, due to their ignoring basic security practices. Why are health records stored on Sony Pictures servers along with everything else? Why were data silos and graduated access not in place? I never see any of these corporate officers held to account for their decisions to not spend resources for security. The only people I have any measure of sympathy for are the rank-and-file employees caught in the middle of decisions made by well-compensated executives who never have to face the consequences of their disregard for anything other than themselves and their own compensation. I have to take issue with "norms" for intelligence services as well. These are groups with no morals or ethics, what makes you think they would ever adhere to any sort of "norm." These are criminals and criminals do not adhere to norms imposed from anyone other than themselves.
- xnull1guest 12y ago
  I seem to be in the minority on Hacker News, but as someone in the professional computer security field I know that any company or state/department/organization can be hacked by a motivated attacker. In the case of SONY, the attackers were able to enter the network through spearphishing emails - something that essentially no investment in security is going to prevent. The malware similarly could not have been detected, as signatures for this specific compilation were not known. I have a hard time blaming the victim of a cyber attack that would have been practically impossible to prevent. I agree that SONY made bad decisions with regard to its hording of unnecessary data, but also recognize that this is hardly unique to SONY and not standard advice given by security professionals (it should be). Norms are important so that you can accuse 'groups with no morals or ethics' of doing something wrong. Norms may only discourage and not prevent behavior but without norms its difficult to find common ground for behavior that may otherwise be chalked up to 'culture' or 'tradition' or 'nature'.
  - Alupis 12y ago
    > but as someone in the professional computer security field I know that any company or state/department/organization can be hacked by a motivated attacker. You seem to give Sony too much credit, and also forget that they had a file server with open internal access which had a directory called "Passwords" which contained a plain text file with all the credentials to their internal servers. That's something I'd expect to see at some small business with no professional IT on staff... certainly not from a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of employees and a full-time professional IT staff. Sure, the attackers may very well have spearphised their way inside, but once inside, they didn't have to go through any of the normal hassles of island-hopping with more exploits, etc. They just logged in like they belonged. Motivated attacker or script-kiddy, once inside, Sony made it awfully easy.

xnull1guest 12y ago

Thank you for mentioning international cyber operation norms. This is the center of US international cyberpolicy efforts. Ontologies describing categories of cyber operations often place destructive attacks like the one against SONY into a category of its own and these are usually considered fair only in very particular scenarios of provocation. An addendum here regarding 'free speech'. There is some question about The Interview being a propaganda effort on behalf of the US State Department (which was given a preview as early as July) since #GOP released emails where CEO Lynton discusses the effects of the ending with RAND Corporation strategist and nuclear deterrence specialist Bruce Bennett and Lynton confirmed analysis of its effectiveness with Senior State Department officials. (It also doesn't help that the script writer was asked specifically to consider changing his character from an anonymous leader of NK to Kim Jong-Un).

semperfaux 12y ago

"To be fair," there are norms about how intelligence services behave. That we, the proletariat, aren't aware of them doesn't make them any less real. That they've either changed or that we've only just discovered what they are doesn't say anything about what they are or used to be. "Norms" don't necessarily make things objectively or even subjectively better. They just make them standard. Asking for norms will get you absolutely nothing, even if you get what you ask for: They'll just establish what they're already doing as normal, and continue to not tell you about the new things they start doing. Because that's what intelligence is; if they told people what they were doing, for better or worse, people would make it harder for them to do.

xnull1guest 12y ago
The norms in question are those of cyber attacks. This includes but is not limited to intelligence operations. The SONY attack, for example, was not an intelligence operation. The downing of the Syrian airforce was not an intelligence operation. Nor was Stuxnet or the the Georgia cyberattack. Norms are important because they are precursors to law (in this case international law). Norms create ground upon which a country can accuse another, a ground upon which you can achieve consensus among many parties, and norms set expectations of behavior that if loosely followed every country can benefit from.

wavefunction 12y ago

I hold Sony primarily responsible for the release of private data, due to their ignoring basic security practices. Why are health records stored on Sony Pictures servers along with everything else? Why were data silos and graduated access not in place? I never see any of these corporate officers held to account for their decisions to not spend resources for security. The only people I have any measure of sympathy for are the rank-and-file employees caught in the middle of decisions made by well-compensated executives who never have to face the consequences of their disregard for anything other than themselves and their own compensation. I have to take issue with "norms" for intelligence services as well. These are groups with no morals or ethics, what makes you think they would ever adhere to any sort of "norm." These are criminals and criminals do not adhere to norms imposed from anyone other than themselves.

xnull1guest 12y ago
I seem to be in the minority on Hacker News, but as someone in the professional computer security field I know that any company or state/department/organization can be hacked by a motivated attacker. In the case of SONY, the attackers were able to enter the network through spearphishing emails - something that essentially no investment in security is going to prevent. The malware similarly could not have been detected, as signatures for this specific compilation were not known. I have a hard time blaming the victim of a cyber attack that would have been practically impossible to prevent. I agree that SONY made bad decisions with regard to its hording of unnecessary data, but also recognize that this is hardly unique to SONY and not standard advice given by security professionals (it should be). Norms are important so that you can accuse 'groups with no morals or ethics' of doing something wrong. Norms may only discourage and not prevent behavior but without norms its difficult to find common ground for behavior that may otherwise be chalked up to 'culture' or 'tradition' or 'nature'.
- Alupis 12y ago
  > but as someone in the professional computer security field I know that any company or state/department/organization can be hacked by a motivated attacker. You seem to give Sony too much credit, and also forget that they had a file server with open internal access which had a directory called "Passwords" which contained a plain text file with all the credentials to their internal servers. That's something I'd expect to see at some small business with no professional IT on staff... certainly not from a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of employees and a full-time professional IT staff. Sure, the attackers may very well have spearphised their way inside, but once inside, they didn't have to go through any of the normal hassles of island-hopping with more exploits, etc. They just logged in like they belonged. Motivated attacker or script-kiddy, once inside, Sony made it awfully easy.