John McAfee: 'I know who hacked Sony Pictures – and it wasn't North Korea'
ibtimes.co.uk
ibtimes.co.uk
- The malware used was nearly identical to the that used by the Iranian group who attacked the Aramco oil company in Saudia Arabia in 2012.
- Linguistic analysis of the communications by #GOP suggest a native Russian author.
- SONY had given the US State Department a preview of The Interview in July 2014 (after the Mundt-Smith anti-propaganda law was immolated) and SONY was contracting with RAND Corporation specialist Bruce Bennett, a specialist on nuclear deterrence (NK is a nuclear state) and North Korea.
- Leaked emails with Bennett have him discussing the effectiveness of the movie to cause instability in North Korea.
Now McAfee is claiming the group had anti-trust motivations?
The SONY hack gets more and more interesting.
Besides, how many North Koreans would ever see this movie, anyway?
The number is not zero. According to a PBS Frontline documentary, there are smugglers that bring video players, USB thumb drives, and DVDs with movies into North Korea.
From the leaked SONY emails:
“The North has never executed an artillery attack against the balloon launching areas. So it is very hard to tell what is pure bluster from North Korea, since they use the term ‘act of war’ so commonly,” wrote Bennett. “I also thought a bunch more about the ending. I have to admit that the only resolution I can see to the North Korean nuclear and other threats is for the North Korean regime to eventually go away.”
“In fact, when I have briefed my book on ‘preparing for the possibility of a North Korean collapse’ [Sept 2013], I have been clear that the assassination of Kim Jong-Un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government. Thus while toning down the ending may reduce the North Korean response, I believe that a story that talks about the removal of the Kim family regime and the creation of a new government by the North Korean people (well, at least the elites) will start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks into the North (which it almost certainly will). So from a personal perspective, I would personally prefer to leave the ending alone.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/17/exclusive-s...
http://nypost.com/2014/12/17/us-officials-approved-kim-jong-...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/17/the-interview-us-go...
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/the-interview-state-de...
As far as it leaking into NK, South Korean activists had promised publicly that they would fly some via the balloons Bennett mentions in the quote.
Further leaked conversation with Lynton (CEO) confirm that senior State Department officials agree with Bennett's analysis.
Oh, and executives asked Dan Sterling (the script writer) to change his character from a non-descript anonymous leader of North Korea to Kim Jong-Un and a member of the Kim family specifically.
(Disclaimer: I'm no fan of Hollywood being used as a tool for propaganda against us by our own imperial, authoritarian masters, either.. its a double-edged sword..)
I haven't followed the story, and I don't know if that's still current. I just thought it was interesting to see such a big name bucking the current.
The pastebins and messages from #GOP themselves are concerned about the 'movie of terrorism' and promised to give a Christmas gift to those following the leaks. The Christmas gift was leaked email conversations between CEO Lynton and strategic state specialists and where several mentions are made about the involvement of the State Department in the analysis of the movie.
To complicate things though the malware used had seen previous use in Iranian attacks against Saudi oil companies and linguistic analysis suggests that the author of the #GOP messages was likely a native Russian speaker.