Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmschulman | Hacker News Reader

Some of the Sony leaks have demonstrated the company's ability to influence the news cycle, giving them pull with certain news organizations and editors to change or remove parts of a story.

I'm disappointed by the lack of evidence given by the FBI and other departments investigating the attack that directly tie the incident to a specific government or group of non-state actors. Many well-known security professionals have given opinions contrary of the FBI's findings, stating that it's not only difficult to determine the source of the attack but also incredibly dangerous to attribute the attack to a specific government given so little direct evidence.

There are so many aspects to this story that don't add up, but most strikingly, the press's push to point the finger squarely at North Korea for all this.

View on HN

Why is it 'incredibly dangerous' to do so?

I continue to be blown away by Hacker News' collective refusal to believe that NK is likely behind this hack. Do you all also doubt that they were behind the other hacks mentioned by the FBI (e.g. on South Korean banks and media outlets)? Is it 'incredibly dangerous' to accuse them of that as well?

I understand the post-Iraq mentality of demanding evidence before going to war with a country, but that's not what's going on here.

Also, given how mouthy North Korea is, nobody finds it telling that other than a single denial on December 7th, they've been quiet? That denial, by the way, consisted of bullshit like saying that there were “a great number of supporters and sympathizers” with North Korea “all over the world,” including “champions of peace” who might initiate more “righteous reaction” against the United States’ “evildoings.”

"I continue to be blown away by Hacker News' collective refusal to believe that NK is likely behind this hack."

Skepticism is healthy and encourages discussion. I am not observing a "collective refusal" as you put it, but instead a strong skepticism from the tech community (a community who has a good basis to interpret this story with).

"Do you all also doubt that they were behind the other hacks mentioned by the FBI (e.g. on South Korean banks and media outlets)? Is it 'incredibly dangerous' to accuse them of that as well?"

The discussion is around a specific cybersecurity attack, not North Korea's capabilities, so that's a bit of a straw man argument.

"I understand the post-Iraq mentality of demanding evidence before going to war with a country, but that's not what's going on here."

No rational person is making a case for war over this, but the fact that you mention going to war over this demonstrates why it is incredibly dangerous to make these assumptions about North Korea without looking at all the available evidence.

"Also, given how mouthy North Korea is, nobody finds it telling that other than a single denial on December 7th, they've been quiet?"

Quite the opposite. I think it would fit the profile if North Korea was being mouthy at this point in time. Their silence would suggest this is a delicate situation for them politically and they don't know how to respond to it.

It's like what Lenin said...you look for the person who will benefit and uh...

I am the walrus.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov

Lost me. The Big Lebowski (how could I forget). http://coub.com/view/rvf8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono

Actually, we don't really have a good basis to interpret the story. The evidence that the US government has used to verify that NK was involved is most likely classified. The most straightforward way to verify the NK government's involvement is a high-level NK spy, or a communications tap on NK's political leadership. If it captured a high-level meeting regarding the "progress of the Sony hack," for example, then that would be pretty strong evidence of NK's involvement. Yet there's no way that any press release could include such info without also compromising their sources.

The point of the US government saying "NK is involved" is to say "We have verified NK is involved," not to give hard proof. Such proof may exist, but it may not be possible to divulge without also causing other consequences, as I mentioned above. It's not a trial, and they're under no obligation to present any of their core evidence or reasoning. It's up to us whether we choose to believe them or not.

The tech community sometimes overestimates how informed it is. For example, consider how someone would be viewed by the tech community if they claimed that governments were writing BIOS malware, and they made that claim before 2013.

So it seems mistaken to believe that the tech community is any better suited to interpret the story than any other community. Various intelligence communities or politics communities might even be better suited than we are at figuring out reasons why the story shouldn't be taken at face value, if any such reasons even exist.

> Hacker News' collective

Has there been a poll or are you just making that up?

I think dmschulman summed it up pretty well, but your outrage over a healthy does of skepticism, demands for evidence, and a desire not to jump to conclusions is the truly bizarre thing to me.

It is hard to be convinced that North Korea were responsible. I think people just can't see them having a sophisticated enough hacker culture within government to pull this off. Sure, maybe it was outsourced to Russia. But an internal op like this seems so unlikely given what we know.

>Why is it 'incredibly dangerous' to do so?

Most of human beings are "belief oriented” which is the result of hundreds of thousands of years’ evolution. It’s the cause of most conflicts in the world. The widely supported Iraq war is an example. That’s why it is dangerous to do so.

In hacker news community, there are more “evidence oriented” post-modern people. This makes a difference.

Your belief that you're "evidence oriented" is endearing. I can't help but think that in many cases it is merely another form of belief, and one that people are equally sanctimonious about holding.

Any discussion about Uber, or the evils of traditional capitalism (especially HFT) on here is full of distinctly belief driven people.

Okay, so on what do you base your belief of HFT, Uber and "traditional capitalism"? I have to assume that information inferred from data.

HFT is the easiest, it provides liquidity, helps to keep spreads narrow, flash crashes are nasty, but so rare there have been only 2 (and the cost of those was minimal, a few failed margin calls, oh noes).

Uber is tricky, because it's run by assholes, but that's not really different from the taxi (cab) industry in most cities. Plus they skirt the law, which was largely instituted to protect the interests of the incumbent taxi companies. It arguably helps to make the taxi market healthier, thanks to its increased efficiency, lower prices (larger supply), which leads to a bigger overall market, which likely leads to better relative wage for drivers. The potential negative externality happens when demand dries up, drivers are forced out of the market pretty fast, due to the more efficient pricing they must apply (or lose market share). And of course, Uber has competition Lyft (in the US) and Wundercar (in Europe) comes to mind.

And on traditional capitalism, the simple truth is that it's inescapable. People are locally rational, they have limited information, and oftentimes they have utility function that are non-optimal even locally, but they are rational nonetheless, and again, people are price sensitive. So capitalism is just the machine of progress that seeks more efficient allocation of capital. And even if you do away with property ownership (and try to opt for a temporary property possession model) you'll find that other types of capital still remain, they just get more perversely important (human capital, who knows who's who, influence, reputation, use of force, and so on).

And you can see that for these inferences you need evidence, but these are not single instance based cases like the Sony hack. It's much more sound and safe to trust and act upon these aggregates, than upon a single FBI "post" and the resulting drama.

There is also the very strong polarization of everything in the US. When they choose a target they just paint everything about it in black.

On a related note, I discovered that many Americans have no ideas of the tremendous role of Russia in WWII, it has been completely erased from US collective memory the only thing that's left in popular US memory is USSR, communism is bad (and I'm pretty sure the details of why are blurry), and Russia can only be evil.

They are now painting other targets that way, like Iran, NK, and they used the same propaganda against Iraq. I guess they don't know (and acknowledge and take part of the responsibility for) the role of the US in creating the current situation in Korea.

There is a real lack of a measured and intellectual discourse in US public space (and by radiating influence, it's crushing it in the rest of the world).

What you seem to be saying, is that because you know of no measured and intellectual discourse in the United States, there is none.

Maybe you're looking in the wrong place.

Honestly, yours is truly a superficial, fake-sophisticate straw man, devoid of facts or information and pandering to the most simplistic anti-American tropes. I was happy to ignore it, but this caught my eye:

> I guess they don't know (and acknowledge and take part of the responsibility for) the role of the US in creating the current situation in Korea.

I'm curious what you mean by that.

Well, since he's upset that Americans don't give Russians enough credit for their WWII contributions, such as the gift of a Stalinist government to the Korean Peninsula, he's probably blaming the US for "creating the current situation" in which the South Koreans have been denied the benefits of life in a Stalinist Workers Paradise.

> I discovered that many Americans have no ideas of the tremendous role of Russia in WWII

Oh we have. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of...

I quote: "Female deaths in connection with rapes in Germany are estimated to 240,000". Stalin himself had to ask them to be more gentle, what an irony from such a horrible person.

Besides, Russia was on the side of Hitler until Hitler betrayed it. It's not like they chose to be on the same side as US and democracy and freedom for the last year of WWII, it was the definition of "coincidence".

"Russian historians have criticized the estimates and argue that these crimes were not widespread."

Anecdotal here - my mother's mother (an Austrian of Jewish descent) had to dress up as an old woman to avoid being raped in the Russian quarter of Vienna.

Russians were notorious for this, so my father (an Englishman) was welcomed with relatively open arms, as the English were known to them as gentlemen less likely to brutalise women.

Tanks for the demonstration. Everybody was more or less on hitler's side after Munich until a different something happened to everyone. The U.S. entered the war only after they got attacked themselves (see a pattern here?).

If remembering and describing a country's past is only remembering the worst without any nuance, why would anyone remember the U.S. for any positive thing? Or maybe the torture by the CIA or the 100000 deaths in Iraq doesn't erase the helping others in WWII and we have to live in a complex world where nothing is really black or white. just try to remember salient Facts, not rewrite history. And some countries could benefit from learning to say: "we're sorry", more than to say:"we're awesome" (that's valid for the 2 bullies of the other 200 countries).

On the NK situation, crossing the 38th parallel during the counter attack without having the means for a complete military victory and occupation just helped polarize everything. And now we can link the 2: invading Germany and Japan was possible because Russia agreed, invading NK was not possible because russia was against it. And this whole idea of "checking with Russia first" runs contrary to the Cold War mindset.

Many well-known security professionals

...who are pandering to a crowd, and based upon essentially no information at all, but just the same sort of "I think" gut feeling notions that we see on HN. While there should always be questions about government honesty, it's rather incredible how far people will reach to find to clutch onto something that backs whatever their initial knee-jerk opinion was, seen throughout the comments here.

Quite a few comments are among the "they're making this up to go to war", which is simply incredible: Are people so far out of the loop on world players or current events? The US in no universe will launch a military action against a rogue, shells-pointed-at-Seoul, nuclear armed nation because they hacked Sony. That premise alone is simply absurd.

Is the US trying to isolate North Korea? They're already completely isolated. I mean...do people understand the situation North Korea is in, and the complete lack of tools to deal with this? The US gains literally nothing pointing the finger at North Korea.

> "they're making this up to go to war"

literally nobody has said that, all that most people have said is that if you're going to accuse another nation of an act of "cyberwar" at least provide proof. Is that too much to ask?

"Opportunities to get backing for war are rare, and so there is good reason to think that the government would try to capitalize on them."..."USS Maine, anyone?"..."Queue an invasion of North Korea."

Literally quite literally doesn't mean what you apparently think it means.

And the general conspiratorial narrative is that the US is trying to blame a blameless North Korea to achieve...something. Not sure what.

cite a single comment where somebody has said "they are making this up to go to war"

This thread is filled with them, but here is one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8773230

The parent you replied to quoted three.

"And the general conspiratorial narrative is that the US is trying to blame a blameless North Korea to achieve...something. Not sure what."

To assume the US Government's PR team won't use anything/everything to reinforce, reiterate or bolster it's own agenda is just idiocy. There are far too many examples throughout history where it has.

Whether or not that means that this investigation is a farce, is another question.

My hangup here is that the DPRK historically provides absolutely no shortage of excuses for the US to grandstand, but with the occasional exception of them shelling some South Korean island or kidnappings a tourist, they are usually (publically) ignored. Niche news websites about North Korea will talk about the crap they do or say weekly, but you usually only see US government officials and mainsteam US media piping up once or twice a year.

Its not like the US has to manufacturer an excuse to complain about them. There is an abundance of genuine North Korean antics to choose from if they want to.

>Are people so far out of the loop on world players or current events?

The people who comment on HN about politics are hilariously confused.

Don't generalize, people have many diverse opinions on HN. For example, you are commenting on politics on HN.

My comment is meta. Yes I should have said some people.

The US gains literally nothing pointing the finger at North Korea.

It also loses nothing, which might be the case if Russia or China were behind the attacks.

Not true. Can you imagine the economic impact if this stands as a case study on how lax security standards could be at large, trusted private institutions? That all it takes is one pissed-off employee with a cursory background in computer security to cause billions of dollars in damages and rampant fear?

It's much easier to address public fears with an easy scapegoat than to owe up to the overall frailty of network-driven industry. Could you imagine the cost of creating "the TSA of networks belonging to important private entities?"

Part of me does wonder whether we're headed in that direction. See: Rainbow's End, by Vernor Vinge.

What is the equilibrium in a world where state funded actors can anonymously attack major companies / infrastructure components? I am not convinced that is possible for a Sony to secure itself to such a level that it will not be vulnerable to attacks by state actors.

Not without actually - ya know - trying.

> Could you imagine the cost of creating "the TSA of networks belonging to important private entities?"

Sounds like a huge bounty for whoever gets the contract.

That's exactly the issue. There are lots of people who can imagine that. They can also imagine corporate boards having a much harder time saying no to them in an environment that the Feds have described as dangerous. If nothing else, not (literally) buying into the scare opens companies to even more expensive liability.

It conditions the population against North Korea. Not saying that that's what's happening right now, but it's kind of our MO. We target a specific place for ulterior motives, generate public animosity among our population of morons who couldn't find X country on a map if their lives depended on it, then we put on the squeeze in order to illicit a reaction, and then when a certain action happens we can manufacture into an excuse for military action, we take military action. And then we proclaim how innocent and unwillingly we were dragged into something we had been gunning for even before the last war we were engaged in was over.

What would the ulterior motive be for taking on the cost of a war against NK? They have little to no oil or other super-valuable commodities as far as I know, so there's little financial motive. They're a risk to their neighbors but are not a credible global threat, and they're less likely to attack the U.S. than more dangerous and ideologically fervent enemies like ISIS.

They're more of an annoyance than anything else. The strategy so far seems to have been to wait it out and hope their crazy cult-regime finally collapses. I don't see any reason anyone would want to expedite this unless they thought there was a clear and present danger of NK escalating in both belligerence and power in the near future. I can imagine the former, but not the latter.

Punishing defiance can be an ulterior motive. When the mafia send someone in to break the shopkeepers fingers they often risk their guy getting arrested, etc. losing more than the shopkeeper is worth. They still go through with it because that shop isn't the only thing in the balance, it's about keeping all the other shops scared and maintaining "credibility." You can hear war mongering politicians talk about "credibility" and "credible threat of force" all the time.

The value of NK isn't anything internally intrinsic; the main reason it has "survived" with its current and past leadership is that it is a buffer between the "West" and China. And previously it was seen as a buffer between Japan (and also the US) and Russia; Stalin was the one who authorised the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in the very last days of WWII. Russia's leadership at the time remembered Russia loss of face (and territory) to Japan in 1905; remind you of current day invasions and annexations with ruminations of nationalism?

The Korean War was in many ways similar to a "more power" version of Ukraine today.

Why was North Korea included in Bush's famous Axis of Evil speech?

I'm fairly certain it was for nuclear proliferation.

Drug running, counterfeit currency production, kidnapping foreign citizens, nuclear testing and producing nuclear capable missiles and testing them in provocative ways.

Plus their prison camp system, internal mass famines, brutal authoritarian dictatorship.

NK may be a sideshow as far as a lot of interested parties are concerned. The benefit (if you can call it that) is that the presently-tapering security contractor gravy train gets a new shot in the arm, the Feds have a chance to set up "partnership" agreements with any number of tech firms that they just alienated during the NSA fiasco, and a much higher level of generalized network surveillance becomes a thing that plenty of companies start thinking they want.

I obviously don't know the story behind this. The point is, there are plenty of opportunistic and self-serving domestic interests who probably don't either but can nevertheless turn this hack into a very beneficial event, regardless of who did it. From their perspective, NK being the source is actually the best-case scenario.

It would drain China's resources and focus, Russia's for that matter too. But, again, I said that I don't think that's what's happening with NK. NK is even too much of a pandora's box of crazy that I think will only be set off as a last ditch effort against, mainly, China. I see it as kind of a bomb that is surgically attached to China, which we can somewhat easily figure out how to set off if we so desire.

If they are wrong, then they take a hit to their credibility. The Republican Party would pounce on this and never let up. It would not look good in the public eye if the government's cybersecurity apparatus – which the president just spent the past year and a half defending – fingered the wrong country behind an attack.

oh if it were Russia I am quite sure the current Administration would waste no time exposing them. The level of disrespect shown towards with both official and unofficial comments borders on undiplomatic by most counts.

It matters little because the big issue here is that a group of cyber terrorists have effectively shut down a major corporation and most western countries are just standing by. if that is not green lighting future copy catting nothing I don't know what is.

The President should screen the film at the White House and allow it to be distributed to the armed forces

It wins a few more points in the "you need to give up more of your privacy so we can protect you" campaign when we could be talking about "nation-state cyber-war" rather than a "Target-like hack" by hackers nobody knows or cares about. North Korea is an "iconic enemy" people can rally against.

I wouldn't say the US is wrong, but at the same time, I wouldn't blindly trust the accuracy of everything they claim.

"The US in no universe will launch a military action against a rogue, shells-pointed-at-Seoul, nuclear armed nation because they hacked Sony."

Is that your gut feeling? :p I understand it's backed by strong arguments but so were (some) security professionals opinion. They might give updates after the FBI's communiqué and are aware of the limitations of their argumentation. That being said I do share your opinion on the matter...

EDIT: elaborating... EDIT 2: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted. No matter how much I believe US won't go to war there is always a possibility I could be proven wrong. I don't think security professionals analysis was based on "no information at all" (think things we know about North Korea), no more than the analysis we have about US not going to war.

(I guess to add on to yours and the previous posters' comments...)

Even if it wasn't North Korea, the U.S. still gains nothing from this except for maybe making NK look even worse.

And the U.S. might make some stupid political decisions, but there's a difference "ill advised" decision and a flat-out stupid decision. Going to war with NK would mean South Korea getting attacked by NK. Would the U.S. risk that?

I honestly do not think so, because it'd signal the end of the U.S.' diminishing credibility in the global sphere. Nobody wants to be friends with a country who'd willingly throw a friend under the bus simply because another country (which has very few friends) hacked into one of millions of corporations in said country.

If the U.S. and USSR could go years without nuking each other, I believe the U.S. has enough restraint to not launch (enough of) an attack on NK that would provoke a NK response towards their southern neighbors.

> The US gains literally nothing pointing the finger at North Korea.

The US gains quite a lot by pointing fingers at a bad guy. This bad guy happens to be North Korea. Anything just to keep the public distracted and the media happy to report something else but CIA torture.

...who are pandering to a crowd, and based upon essentially no information at all

References?

What I remember is a well-argued article pointing to many parts of the hack that would seem to disqualify North Korea - for example the use of a (South) Korean language locale which North Koreans would in fact not normally be able or likely to use, broken English with little relation to how North Koreans would speak, etc.

Now, North Korean could be making a careful effort to impersonate Western hackers making a crude effort to impersonate North Koreans. But that's kind of reaching and there's a bit more than no evidence.

"What I remember is a well-argued article pointing to many parts of the hack that would seem to disqualify North Korea"

That article was a classic case of "assume the end result, and then make everything you've heard...including indirect, second-hand rumors, fit the mold you've set". You probably saw that "analysis" on here, and it was quite soundly destroyed as being largely ignorant.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8766411

But it went with them because it fits the case.

Further the whole "that bad English doesn't fit how I think bad English should look" is...well it's preposterous. The article also uses a ridiculous email exchange which could be anyone as proof -- again, fitting the mold.

There is literally nothing in that, beyond some person's subjective take on how a person might mangle English (this is one of those classic claims that assumes some grand conspiracy...but that the conspirators were too dumb to get the basic stuff right), that is based upon legitimate analysis.

Your link is just someone saying "you're wrong" with no references, like you are.

They gain HEAPS pointing at North Korea. They can say that it shows the threat that the US has from other countries on a hacking front, and that they need more funding around a cyber defense initiative. IT can't be - oh anonymous (or some group like them) since no one will take it as seriously.

They want to point at a country that will say "damn straight we did it" even if they didn't (North Korea is perfect!)

No matter what you believe, some group just caused massive damage to Sony. If the US was looking to justify "cyber defense" spending, how would a rogue group not be a bigger threat? A rogue group better fits the terrorism narrative that has justified much of the last decade's military and intelligence spending. You're reaching.

China is busy providing all that justification, which is why Cybersecurity is getting massive military investment already. Sony being hacked is nothing, in terms of national security, compared to what China is getting up to.

They can say that it shows the threat that the US has from other countries on a hacking front

There have been attacks on the US government IT infrastructure. Stolen designs and files from military contractors. Attacks on energy and distribution systems. Attacks on the banking system.

On the grand hierarchy of attacks, this is really, really low. I mean, given the severity and regularity of attacks against things that really, really matter, no the US certainly didn't need this to justify anything. The concern is very real, and significantly more important than some Sony Entertainment emails or movie leaks.

We're gradually seeing HN comments on world events veer into conspiro/4chan /pol/ territory. It's sad but I think inevitable with anonymous discussions.

Really?

Most posters on hackers news, it seems, rejected the idea that the Sony hack was done by North Korea or any easily determined actor.

The US government now has an official conspiracy, that the attack was the work of the government of North Korea. Just because that is conspiracy theory doesn't make it wrong but I and many people still doubt it.

You are replying to an attack on the common dubiousness of many hn posters to the North Korea theory. The attack seems to involve the idea that doubting the US government conspiracy theory has to be, itself, some other kind of more dubious conspiracy theory, when it is actually the belief that there's no evidence in that direction and plenty of evidence away from that direction.

The US in no universe will launch a military action against a rogue, shells-pointed-at-Seoul, nuclear armed nation because they hacked Sony. That premise alone is simply absurd.

I agree that it is absurd, but Washington seems to be talking up that premise.

Obama Vows a Response To Cyberattack on Sony

WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Friday that the United States “will respond proportionally” against North Korea for its destructive cyberattacks on Sony Pictures, but he criticized the Hollywood studio for giving in to intimidation when it withdrew “The Interview,” the satirical movie that provoked the attacks, before it opened.

Deliberately avoiding specific discussion of what kind of steps he was planning against the reclusive nuclear-armed state, Mr. Obama said that the response would come “in a place and time and manner that we choose.” Speaking at a White House news conference before leaving for Hawaii for a two-week vacation, he said American officials “have been working up a range of options” that he said have not yet been presented to him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/world/fbi-accuses-north-ko...

One thing I would like to know, is if this whole thing was perpetrated by the North Korean state because of the potential offence to North Korea from showing their leader being killed, why has the scene of their leader being killed been leaked by the hackers and is now posted all over reddit? That really makes very little sense.

Military action is not the only form of proportionate response. The US has been involved in sanctions based diplomacy against NK for years now around the nuclear programme. The State Department aren't idiots, any form of military action against the North runs the risk of full scale war breaking out.

Every part of the "It's NK" reaction from all institutions of power/news seem just really off. Both MSM and gov't are running with it, without question. And now, most strangers off the street will parrot that same answer. Call it a PR success.

My guess, there are some serious, institutional-shaking smoking gun emails between media execs, lobbyists, gov't.

Official PR response of all parties presently guilty is to make as much noise about anything that's not in the data dump.

"My guess, there are some serious, institutional-shaking smoking gun emails between media execs, lobbyists, gov't."

Wouldn't those be released in the SPE exec. mail dumps?

The strongest evidence of a North Korean tie isn't what happened - it's what didn't happen. They didn't release The Interview on torrent sites. Whether this was the work of the NK government, or one of their brainwashed citizens, it doesn't really matter. Their objective was to stop the impending embarrassment of their Dear Leader, and that is exactly what happened. NK was at a bare minimum the cause of the hack, and was almost certainly the perpetrator.

Quite often the easiest way to identify a criminal is to look at who benefited most from the crime.

The initial demand asked for money reward. It could easily be some organized crime hackers that wanted money, and then blamed it on North Korea to throw off everyone's scent.

On the Internet nobody knows you're North Korea (if you're sophisticated enough).

Also, their main evidence seems to be that "they used the same hacking software as North Korea had used before - and can be found on the black market". So this is a little like some hackers buying forensics tools that can hack iPhones, the same ones the police are buying, and then saying the police hacked the celebrity nudes a few months ago.

I've never understood why so many here ignore the CONTENT of the releases from the GOP. It's so clearly NK or an NK sympathizer. I don't see that kind of regional outrage and anger typically being used to frame someone else.

What you describe is not evidence of anything. One could take the exact same set of observations and equally well conclude that this is a false flag operation.

What would the US Government gain from that? This isn't going to serve as casus belli for a war with North Korea. North Korea stands to gain the most from this.

Is it worth observing how quickly we have stopped talking about rectal feeding of Guantanamo Bay detainees?

The facts presented in the FBI's statement were inconclusive enough to allow North Korea to deny the charges (which they have done).

Assuming the FBI have no reason to lie, the more interesting question is "why did the FBI make a statement mentioning North Korea at all?"

The FBI could have chosen to not name the suspect. The only reason I can come up with is that the US is trying to send a message to the world (perhaps China specifically?) that the US is irrational, and may do something crazy at any moment.

The historical precedent would be the game of brinksmanship that played out over the Cuban missile crisis. Obama just doesn't have that sheen of crazy that Eisenhower had.

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred when Kennedy was President, not Eisenhower. And you really only find that "convince the adversary we're crazy so they're too scared to do anything" strategy in the Nixon administration.

Sorry yeah I don't know why I said Eisenhower.

I stand by the assertion that the US was trying to come off as a little crazy in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There needs to be quick resolution for the public to forget about it.

And a resolution that removes all incompetency from Sony's end while simultaneously painting them as the victim of terrorism.

I wish I could remember the HN thread, but another HNer who claimed to have worked for Sony Picture's security described the security system as non-existent and was surprised that it hadn't happened sooner... Now to go looking for that.

Even if their security system was poorly constructed, they're still victims of cyber terrorism.

I have to take exception with the term terrorism here. They were victims of cyber crime, sure.

Not necessarily Sony, but the last missives threatening 9/11-style attacks on movie theaters would count as terrorism. Up until that point it was a hacking scandal against Sony. Once you start threatening the movie-going public, then you move into terrorism.

And any of us who've worked in a corporate environment know that Sony is by no means exceptional in that respect. There are security vulnerabilities all over cyberspace just waiting for someone to exploit them (just as in real life). We're protected mainly by some combination of good will, disinterest, and fear of punishment (also as in real life).

I thought it was interesting how much the FBI wanted to paint this as a natural and normal part of their job. If I'm dumb enough to leave my computer vulnerable to the world and someone steals my credit card data, is the FBI going to come help me investigate too?

You're being rhetorical, but yes, citizens and companies can and do regularly report internet crimes to the FBI and have them investigated.

Normally the FBI would want to see monetary loss of e.g. $50k (arbitrary number I just chose) before they start caring, so your credit card probably isn't going to cut it.

You seriously think that your debit card is on the same playing field as this attack? Get real, the FBI doesn't care about your checking account, nor should they.

Seems like there would be substantial traffic logs if 100TB+ of data flowed from Sony to NK, right? Surely the NSA would have seen this traffic, why was Sony not informed of this? Also nobody at Sony noticed suspicious persistent connections to their gateway? Seems if it was not an inside the job the "hackers" must of had access for months to a year to gather that amount of data. I haven't gone looking, but I have doubts the movie in question even existed if there are not copies running rampant on the net. Yes I agree too much of what we're being told does not make sense.

You think the movie never existed? So the whole thing is a conspiracy by Sony and the US government? So Sony intentionally leaked all their own financial data? Sony leaked all their own private compromising emails?

So Sony leaked all their guts, but this movie?

Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying.

My point is that this can't be a conspiracy by Sony, because they would never leak the extremely compromising information that has been leaked. A lot of the leaked information makes them look very bad.

If you are trying to say that the movie not being leaked means the movie never existed, that doesn't make sense. If North Korea did hack Sony, they would not leak the movie because they hate the movie and don't want anyone to see it. If a group of other hackers hacked Sony and are pretending to be North Korea (compiling code on computers with the Korean language), then they wouldn't leak the movie because North Korea wouldn't leak it and they are pretending to be North Korea.

A film is usually completed many months before release; photography generally wraps more than a year in advance of release. The script can float about for years before release. Scripts aren't secret, with rare exceptions (eg a big franchise film like the new Star Wars) - they're shred around freely, because any script worth its salt is registered with the Writer's Guild for copyright establishment purposes, so there's no big advantage to keeping it secret. Only film buffs enjoy reading film scripts, the general public does not.

Details about who's attached to a project as a star/director, or senior technician are easily available through trade newspapers and industry newsletters. The 'packaging' of a film ('Seth Rogen to star in The Interview') is the first stage of the marketing, taking place as long as 2-3 years before release, sometimes longer. Basically the way you get a film made is this: Write the script; find some famous actors who like it; get them to sign (largely) non-binding 'letters of intent' to act in it if it manages to attract financing; call up investors (including studios) and say 'do you want to put up the money for this? It's a great script, and I've got letters of intent from Seth and James!'; proceed to the stage of writing more binding contracts once you have money in the bank.

Long story short, there has been plenty of time for NK to become aware of the film and get offended about it. By some accounts the idea was in development since the last decade but got shelved when Kim Jong-Il died.

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