How the U.S. Could Retaliate Against North Korea

How fun would it be if the US started an all-out war against NK (ok, that's really unlikely but let's just imagine it) and then find out it was all the doing of some 15yo American kid in his parents basement.

The more the USG discloses, the easier it is for the DPRK to find those places where the USG hacked them and fix it. This is all a coy game of cat and mouse.

Bloodthirst not only blinds but creates evil, manipulates others into believing lies, and the effect is then compounded.

Traditional deterrents don’t work as well in the electronic world, where it can be hard to detect who is responsible for an attack and even harder to negotiate with them.

The only real information from actual government officials is that it merits an "appropriate response" -- the article sets up the reader to think that this response should be against North Korea, when we aren't given any context at all as to whether or not actual government officials think that should be the case. It's disappointing to see these low-on-details, high-on-chest beating pieces being cranked out.

Every article that I have seen recently in the mainstream news boldly implicates North Korea as the culprit, with absolutely zero evidence to back it up. When I don my foil hat and wear my fnord-detecting goggles, this is what I find.

- The US federal government has been attempting to assemble a military "cyber command" with both offensive and defensive capabilities since 2005, if not sooner. 2005 was when I first heard about it, but it wasn't actually called "cyber command" until late 2006.

- China has a military-sponsored unit of network security professionals, which would be proven very capable, if any of the attacks attributed to them could actually be traced back to them.

- North Korea is simultaneously ally and irritant to China. Blaming China for past network security breaches has not produced the expected political support. Using North Korea as a more reviled and less diplomatically capable proxy, who also happens to have both a well-funded corps of network security professionals and a rapid and tenacious propaganda response to any possible slight to the country or its leadership, may be a safer means to achieving the desired result.

- Truly damaging security breaches rarely achieve news media saturation. Front-page stories in every outlet are rarer still.

- Nations occasionally conduct false flag operations for propaganda or political gain.

So my current working hypothesis is as follows. A US intelligence organization, with the support of federal network security contractors, worked with Sony insiders to "hack" Sony network security. As we already knew from previous breaches, Sony network security is weak, and they don't even implement the same standards they demand of their partners, contractors, and vendors. Key influencers in the media and entertainment industry are quietly encouraged to support the frame-up. The Congress will soon introduce a national cyber-security bill. Sony's movie, The Interview, is probably an otherwise unremarkable comedy that will enjoy a slight box-office boost from the unconventional publicity.

When I take off the foil hat and fnord goggles, this is all just Sony acting like an ass, then getting checked hard by a small group of trolls doing it for the lulz. The news media should be thoroughly embarrassed by its decreasing commitment to fact-checking, but instead it will simply pretend it never happened.