N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I realize I'm not engaging the core topic being discussed, but stories like this are why I'm surprised people like Will Scott haven't gotten in trouble. (I don't want to single him out, but he's the best example I have at hand.) For the past two years, he's gone to North Korea to volunteer teaching computer science.[1][2] At best, his students' skills will be wasted on some silly Android apps praising the supreme leader. More likely, these students will go on to make software for less-than-ethical purposes: wargame simulation, nuclear explosion modeling, missile guidance systems, or network/server subversion.
I'm not saying this software shouldn't exist, just that the world would be better-off if the DPRK had more difficulty writing it. And I'm surprised the State Department hasn't fined or revoked the passport of any American who has aided the DPRK in this manner.
To use a hypothetical: Would you condone someone teaching particle physics in North Korea? How about biology? Chemistry? Turbine engineering? Teaching any of these would probably increase North Korea's ability to threaten and harm its people and the rest of the world. It's sad that this is the case, but it's hard to argue otherwise.
Unfortunately, I seriously doubt education will help free North Korea. If you read the stories of defectors, you'll find that almost everyone in universities is indoctrinated. Also, because of how people are encouraged to report each other, no underground network of dissenters can exist. Even if 90% of North Koreans wanted to overthrow the government, anyone who voiced dissidence to a few friends would likely be reported and thrown in a prison camp (if not outright executed), along with their family. It doesn't take much to control many.
I really wish it was as easy as, "Education is good." But there can be dire consequences to actions, even ones as typically benign as teaching others. It's important to have a finely-tuned sense of ethics, otherwise we risk harming people who we mean to help.
Exactly which ethical principle(s) are you following?
This seems like a 5 minutes of thought kind of solution to an incredibly complex problem.
North Korea can buy/steal/grow the knowledge they need. They already have nukes, and are working on missiles. I think the notion that we should sanction education (on top of the existing sanctions) is just playing by the already broken playbook we (the rest of the world) have been to date. We are feeding their propaganda machine on how evil we are.
Just a question, how is the DPRK any MORE evil than other states the US happily does business with? (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, China, etc) What in particular makes them evil?
I agree that it is a messed up situation and some horrible shit is going on. But I also have a feeling we are being manipulated by the media.
We are not obligated in any way to provide education to North Korea. Saying we are "evil" for not educating another country is quite a stretch.
North Korea has withstood decades of economic isolation, and yet it lives and its people live much better than citizens of Somalia and other great capitalist nations, not that anyone would let you know. You're not freeing North Korea by isolating it and starving it, you are killing it, and the people. You say it doesn't tame much to control many, but this applies to the West as much as it does anywhere. You have a set of values, and you are in harmony with enough people, you can work for them, with them. The same applies in North Korea, and USSR (where I'm from). The country is a single company, the CEO might be eccentric, but people do have jobs, work hard, have education, healthcare and believe in communism. What they don't have is Hollywood, McDonnalds and Fox News. And this is why you want to "free them". They have nuclear weapons not because they are evil, but because they know what US does to countries people like you believe need to be freed.
And I believe that a bad country that doesn't fuck with your country is better than a bad country that fucks with mine and most countries.
Is this comparison available for us to view?
Does that mean that the Western European models of governance work? Duh!
Because in the US, at least in my experience, 'starving people in africa' is kind of a colloquial trope - it is more readily referenced than starving people in asia, since we don't see charity organizations constantly using asian faces to advertise their foundations.
>forced into producing cash crops for export to Western Europe
Who exactly went around the the countries in africa and asia and disallowed them from growing their own food instead of cash crops? My bet is that these places found economic incentive in growing these crops rather than what they would consume locally - whether the global economy is a net benefit or net loss for a poor country is an entirely different discussion
They have giant statues of their leader and a massive painting of him in the most prestigious place of the country. On official articles, the leader is mentioned everywhere. They manufacture 'pins' with the face of the leader on it and everyone is wearing it. There is painting of the leader in almost every house. (do I need to continue ?)
I'm sorry. I agree NK is a horrible place but that reasoning is ridiculous. Every heard of the Lincoln Memorial [0] or the Lansdowne portrait [1].
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansdowne_portrait
Edit: Just realised you may have been using sarcasm. If so my mistake.
You'll note that there isn't a giant statue of Obama on the White House lawn and in every town square. In N. Korea this is the case.
Adult Americans are not legally required to wear lapel pins featuring prominent past presidents, nor are they required to have images of those presidents in their homes with nothing else permitted on the wall that hosts those images, while in N. Korea they must.
Americans can freely speak a poor opinion of Obama or the Congress or the SCOTUS and not fear that they and their family will be imprisoned and tortured, unlike N. Korea.
The press can say what they like about Obama/other branches of the government without fear of censorship and imprisonment, unlike N. Korea where there is only state-run media that fawn over their leader.
I think that was what they were trying to get at even if they didn't fully expand it.
Washington Post? ;).
North Korean concentration camps, for example, are several orders of magnitude more horrific than the US prison camps you compared them to. And it's significantly easier to end up in an NK concentration camp than it is in prison too.
Families being rounded up and taken away and/or killed is a common theme discussed by the defectors as well.
Now I'm not saying that America (nor any other country for that matter) is perfect. If anything, I happen to agree with you that the US has some hugely hypocritical tendencies. But for all America's faults, the DPRK is still in a whole other of league of bad.
So when totalitarian regimes apply denial of education, mass surveillance, indefinite detention without trial, then that is evil.
But when the USA does it then it is due to a "finely-tuned sense of ethics"?
How's NK different from the US to that regard?
You know, the one country among those two that actually blasted two civilian cities with atomic bombs, sprayed Agent Orange over Vietnam, and has chronically had leaders who "speak with god"...
Don't throw the guilt on him or others,their fate is already abysmal because of their government and sending them a few teachers is not going to benefit their society and if its for feels, well they are misdirected and other countries are far more deserving of our time
Let's not forget the great value and results of CS education in the US:
- spying for pretty much everybody, regardless of location
- drone guidance systems to kill people unlawfully
- missile systems for air strikes on countries purported to have WMDs
- millions of $ spent on silly apps that arguably do nothing to improve quality of life, whilst millions suffer and die of starvation
Do you really know enough about North Korea's tech community to say that "More likely, these students will go on to make software for less-than-ethical purposes"?
Getting dangerous? The game is over, Europe has outsourced their intelligence gathering and show no indication of even wanting to try to catch up.
If what you say is true: DPRK spends $3 billion (approx) on military.
It's neighbours spend the following:
China: $150 billion (approx) South Korea: $33 billion (approx) Japan: $50 billion (approx)
Lets not forget that South Korea and Japan are satellites for the US, and a conflict would involve them: $640 billion (approx).
So their spending is at least 10x less than their cheapest neighbour.
Especially as each comp sci grad probably has greater potential to contribute to GDP than say your average farm labourer.
That makes the outright wrong assumption that the major cost of Military is personel...
Your argument is close to "Nobody should teach basic chemistry in the middle east, because hey, terrorists might use that knowledge to make bombs."
Plus, More than likely he (and others like him) are providing intel or participating in espionage on behalf of Western Governments.
But to respond to your real argument: It's a matter of probabilities. The chance that an American programmer will work on software harmful to humanity is quite small. The chance that a North Korean programmer will do so is massive. Even if the person doesn't want to work on missile guidance or centrifuge control software, they can be ordered to, and their family can be held hostage. There is no such thing as a conscientious objector in North Korea.
Spoken like a true patriot.
In actual life, most of the world hates the US interventions (too numerous to mention, including toppling legitimate leaders and installing friendly to the US dictators) and invasions (from Phillipines back in the day, to Korea and Vietnam and on to Bush's wars).
Besides South Korea, and if that, nobody has much to fear from North Korea, an insignificant provincial state that 99% of the time deals with its own issues.
Compare that to a hypocritical world "cop", dealing BS "democracy" all around the globe (e.g. mostly ruining previously stable countries to get rid of dictators it doesn't like, while doing business with or helping install dictators it does like elsewhere) to serve its interests.
Great point - the USA only kills millions of other nations people[0][1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
It is the same argument made by nuclear non-proliferation countries. Only responsible countries should own the nuclear weapons. Well, guess how that argument turned out. The only country to use nuclear weapon is the one calls itself responsible one.
Along the lines of your argument, DPRK citizens shouldn't be learning physics, chemistry, mathematics, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and medical or any subject because they all can be used as "weapon" for nefarious purposes.
Keeping the population of a country uneducated because you don't agree with the government running the country is discriminatory and racist. No person irrespective of race or belief or country of citizenship should be denied education.
> Along the lines of your argument, DPRK citizens shouldn't be learning physics, chemistry, mathematics, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and medical or any subject because they all can be used as "weapon" for nefarious purposes.
Except for medicine, probably yes. See my other comment for why I think that is the case.[1]
> Keeping the population of a country uneducated because you don't agree with the government running the country is discriminatory and racist. No person irrespective of race or belief or country of citizenship should be denied education.
How is it racist? I have no ethical issues with South Koreans or North Korean defectors learning these things. I'm simply pointing out a concrete example of how, in some cases, education can be harmful on net. Simplifying it to, "Education is good." won't steer you wrong often. But when it does, the consequences can be horrific.
And to say one doesn't agree with the DPRK is putting it far too mildly. Read Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.[2] The stories will make you thankful to be in whatever country you live in. For many people, North Korea truly is hell on earth. It's far worse than anything Orwell wrote about.
If the leaders of the DPRK could get away with it, they would rain fire on South Korea and the US tomorrow. The only thing stopping them is lack of ability. Educating their citizens helps them gain technology that will most likely be used to achieve the goals of the DPRK's leaders. That will almost certainly lead to more harm than good.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8910491
2. http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North-eboo...
Has it though?
Between now and WWII you've still had several -arguably illegal- wars such as Iraq and Vietnam (and not to mention the cold war with Russia and tensions with Cuba and China). You've had a president assassinated. You've had more than 2 decades of racial segregation; and yet more assassinations (this time of figureheads who campaigned for equality such as Martin Luther King). You've have gun laws that most of the rest of the developed world considers right wing. You have your own breed of religious fanatics - which is so riff that election candidates have to prove to believe in God just stand a chance at becoming president. Then there's the NSA leaks - a whole essay could be written just referencing that organisation alone. And don't get me started on the xenophobic beliefs that the likes of Fox News spreads.
From an outsiders perspective looking in, America hasn't looked too respectful to either it's own nationals nor other countries in the decades following the second world war. So it really doesn't surprise me that many outside of the west might consider the US (and Europe) as bloodthirsty.
This is true, but what is also true is that most of the world outside the US and EU views the West (which is something like 12% of the worlds population) as an extremely bloodthirsty and cruel culture/society (regarding external behaviour) that is the greatest threat the humanity faces today.
You want to believe that the US is ethical and good because you probably live there and like your country and people, which I can understand very well.
Except the US has been in constant perpetual war since 1943...and not all of these wars have been in good faith either.
More DPRK people with the hacker mindset (e.g. not just accepting answers but asking questions, a hunger for knowledge, etc) would in the long term be a really great thing for everyone but the leaders of DPRK.
- you can have a CS degree and be a total and utter asshole (for some reason I though education makes people more polite)
- you can have a CS degree and be an antivaxxer who sees vaccines as Illuminati's conspiracy (not joking here)
- you can have a CS degree and not have an ounce of rational thinking in you
- you can have a CS degree and not be able to code your way out of a paper bag
I could list some more, but you get the picture.
The world would be a better place if subversion didn't exist. As long as the North Koreans keep using it they won't get very far. Maybe Will Scott is funded by the CIA if he's promoting that over git...
American kids should not be allowed to get a computer science education.
In the US, the person must voluntarily choose to pursue such a role. (Though I would not consider Stuxnet unethical.)
What if a skilled programmer in North Korea volunteers to perform unethical work? What if a skilled programmer in US volunteers to perform unethical work?
What if "ethics" simply depends on your country of origin?
To be honest, what you and the grandparent post should be saying is that North Korea is the enemy, and to help the enemy in any way is "bad". Why pretend that you're helping the people of North Korea by not helping the people of North Korea so they can't help their country?
>Right, in US, the government will never force anyone to perform unethical work. That's an interesting assumption.
I think it's a reasonable assumption. You can't be forced to join the military (unless there's a draft) or an intelligence agency, and if you work for one, you can't be forced to do something you don't want to do; you can just quit. They can threaten you with prosecution if you leak anything, but they can't make you do something you don't want to.
In NK you can both be forced to work for an organization and you can be forced to do specific tasks you may not want to do, at risk of torture or death.
>What if "ethics" simply depends on your country of origin?
That is true of course. And no doubt there are going to be NK programmers who are ethical and do nothing but help their populace. Obviously many US programmers are performing unethical tasks daily as well. But again, in the US these will almost always be voluntary actions.
I think educating NK citizens is a perfectly good idea, just there are certain topics that perhaps they should not be taught, due to their oppressive and Machiavellian regime.
We have invented, but more importantly manufactured, a lot of pretty fucking effective weaponry.
You are still doing it by writing that, and actually you aren't suggesting that the trouble to him would come from DPRK, but you are "nicely" suggesting he should get "in trouble" in the US just for lecturing in DPRK. Basically claiming, without writing the words that you are "surprised" he isn't considered a "traitor":
Not only are they evil, but they're cheap too.
But the fact is that the hosts would have billed for the meal because the U.S. government asked to be billed.
The USG requires that officials traveling on business not accept gratuities, gifts, dinners, or anything above a certain value (which is about US$100 -- it gets adjusted for inflation, so it might be higher today).[1]
There is an exemption to allow acceptance of gifts of travel expenses of more $100 when officials travel outside the United States on business, but only if "such acceptance is appropriate, consistent with the interests of the United States, and permitted by the employing agency".[1]
In this case, General Clapper and his staff probably didn't want to deal with the question of whether it was "appropriate" or deal with reporting requirements, so they just asked for the bill. Or, their North Korean hosts, knowing U.S. policy, were proactive in making up a bill.
Either way, the NYT article should have mentioned the USG policy. If they can't get that little thing right, it makes me wonder about the accuracy of the rest of the article.
[1] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2010-title5/html/USCODE-...
Given that presenting one's guest with a bill (or demanding a bill) would seem to violate social norms and cause embarrassment, I would imagine that meals are typically treated the same way.
they can't get that little thing right, it makes
me wonder about the accuracy of the rest of the article.
Same logic?
If a 1000-word article had 50 misspelled words, would you then say that it was a pretty accurate because it was 95% correctly spelled?
No, you'd be horrified. Things like spelling, grammar, and basic facts (the capital of a country, USG policy on gifts, etc.) should be close to 100% correct. That's a lower bound to be taken seriously.
"We realized there was another actor [South Korea] that was also going against them [North Korea] and having great success because of a 0 day they wrote. We got the 0 day out of passive and were able to re-purpose it. Big win."
NSA learned of a 0-day exploit being used by South Korea (not five eyes) and re-purposed it. They had knowledge of an exploit in the wild. Did they share this with anyone in order to close this security flaw? They exploited it. This is not a case of the NSA developing an exploit in house. They took this from the wild. This would seem to confirm suspicions that NSA is/was willing to allow active 0-days to fester, leaving the general public exposed.
If SK was only using it to target, say, Iran and NK, then it would not be in the NSA's interest to disclose the exploit to anyone. Only if they had reason to believe it could be targeting Five Eyes governments or corporations would they feel any need to.
For commercial software the companies who are not finding these bugs on their own are to blame. For open source, the cheapskates who mooch free software without contributing are too blame.
"in almost all instances, for widely used code, it is in the national interest to eliminate software vulnerabilities rather than to use them for US intelligence collection" ( quote from the 2013 panel report, not wired.)
http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/White-House-...
The NSA should have absolutely no relationship with this agency. If NSA finds out about some "catastrophic" loophole, then they should disclose it to multiple agencies at the same time, including this new cybersecurity agency, and should have no "special" relationship with it.
Also this new agency should be a civil agency, not a military or a spy one. NSA is and has always been a "war-time" agency, even if it has been used for non-war purposes (in my opinion wrongfully). Security is in most cases not about war. So why do we let a war-time agency try to militarize the Internet and treat it as a battleground, with everyone's computers as collateral damage, even if there's no immediate danger of "war"?
http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/82416436703/statement-o...
What's interesting is what information the New York Times includes that is not covered in the NSA document, presumably from unidentified officials and former officials.
The document on Der Speigel speaks primarily about taking copies of intelligence from SK hacking efforts against NK and also taking copies of intelligence from NK hacking efforts that had in turn been hacked by SK (and in turn by NSA - "fifth party collection").
The document mentions the NSAs unwillingness to rely on intelligence filtered through so many third parties and made efforts to establish its own foothold.
Essentially none of the article is backed by the document as a first source and must have come from the unnamed sources.
The average US citizen was outraged that some other government would have the audacity to hack anything in the US. This article's goal seems to be to point out that the US Government is hacking all other nation's governments, including NK. (pot calling the kettle black)
- 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.
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).
"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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
FWIW this is my experience with multi-billion dollar companies with thousands of employees and full time professional IT staff.
Perhaps we can get other security professionals to chime in.
Once you get a foothold in a corporate environment, it is the unfortunate truth (I'm sure others will back me up here) that it is very easy to move around without 'island hopping with exploits'. For the most part, pivoting by passing-the-hash will work for 99% of networks.
It is also my understanding that the malware that was purchased for this compromise had the capability to persist across the network, to exfiltrate data, and to sabotage computers.
I'd challenge that assertion. Employee's are often the first line of defense for any company, be it seeing something suspicious or knowing when to alert the right people. Investing in phising attack training can be very worth-while. Or at least adopt a strict company policy that helps ward off the basic forms of this attack.
It's not uncommon to have a company-wide policy that users are not allowed to open attachments in any email from anyone without IT's approval. It's inconvenient, sure, but it protects against multiple email-based attacks (everything from simple viruses to more advanced phishing attacks).
There's even phishing attack training specifically targeted at large enterprise (they send phishing attack emails to your targeted employees and when they fall for it, they get a quick lesson and explanation). [1]
Then again, this is only from two studies done at one large corporation.
I looked around but could not find any studies or data about the long term effectiveness of phishing awareness campaigns (only PR junk), nor could I find evidence that SONY did not engage employees with these sorts of policies and training. Do you know of any such studies?
Do you believe that #GOP would not have gotten in if there were more strict policies and more frequent training?
Investment can make spearphishing much harder. Defense is not always absolute, but about raising the cost for the attacker.
I have trouble thinking of a cost-effective way that SONY could have prevented #GOP from getting in.
IMO SONY had two failures:
1.) The hording of data. Again I don't think that this is uncommon. I would expect to see this at pretty much any company of their size.
2.) The lack of an ability to respond to the APT once it was discovered. This is extremely tricky business, but a critical piece of security. It is common now for businesses to assume that they have been compromised and to build out the capability to recover and isolate issues as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for SONY, all of their data had been exfiltrated out of the network by the time they knew there was a problem.
Amazon, Google etc are specifically targeted all the time. What's different?
The context of the discussion is that SONY, even if it 'increased spending on defense' would have been compromised because it was targeted in an attack rather than an attack of opportunity.
Amazon and Google also get hacked. So does Adobe and Microsoft. So does the DoD and Whitehouse. So does JPMorgan and Wallstreet.
The difference between Sony and the other companies you listed is the effort they put into security/technology-defense.
Yes, anyone might be hacked. That doesn't mean you just throw your arms up and let it happen. Sony effectively threw their arms up.
I think the biggest splash this article may have is added narrative supporting the truthiness of USG attribution to NK - something that seems to be held in high doubt by a large percentage of the technical crowd (but that I think seems pretty reasonable).
I would disagree that this opinion is fine; this is only fine if one selfishly considers oneself more important than the 7000000000+ other people on the planet.
Considering that the majority of Earth's people and natural resources lie outside the US, the long-term best move for the US is to promote global stability and equality. It's not a matter of weakness vs. strength, but short-term vs. long-term thinking.
There are plenty of people more important than me, but I wouldn't sacrifice myself for any of them.
Personally, I think humanity as a whole is pretty important. I wouldn't sacrifice myself for one other person without a really good reason, but I'm more than happy to accept a small short term decrease in local living standards in exchange for the long term stability and prosperity that would come from raising global living standards.
Specifically with regards to surveillance, the NSA is weakening the long-term position of US companies by leaving their systems and software vulnerable to known exploits, and by their actions, encouraging other countries to do the same. It's a negative sum game.
Searching all directions
with your awareness,
you find no one dearer
than yourself.
In the same way, others
are thickly dear to themselves.
So you shouldn't hurt others
if you love yourself.
> But the loot isn't delivered directly to ROC's IP address. Rather, it is routed to a so-called Scapegoat Target. That means that stolen information could end up on someone else's servers, making it look as though they were the perpetrators.
So how do we really know it was North Korea, and not just NSA planting that evidence that NK hacked Sony in those two months? I mean other than "trusting NSA"?
That said one can apply an Occam's calculus using whatever information and reasoning you do trust. I personally trust that, whomever the #GOP was, they were motivated by SONY's role in developing "the movie of terrorism". This seems to me to be consistent with what the group published and with their 'Christmas surprise' showing collaboration between the State Department and SONY on the development of the movie related to its diplomatic value - something I don't think the NSA or allies would do. So I think the group had NK sympathies in mind. Granted, this doesn't rule out attribution to other states or hacktivists who hold these sympathies.
This is interesting and you could look at it a number of different ways:
- Collecting data is one thing, but understanding what it means is incredibly challenging and the NSA might not be doing a great job.
- Even when they can't prevent an attack, there is still value in having this data so that they can attribute the attack and understand something about the motives and methods of the attackers.
- They supposedly were collecting all this info and didn't think to warn Sony about any potential issues.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations#Kno...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_in_the_United_Sta...
[3] http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/13/5998237/nsa-responsible-fo...
[4] Stuxnet http://rt.com/news/snowden-nsa-interview-surveillance-831/
The statement is not saying that any cyberattack is an act of war, it is saying that the United States might treat certain attacks as the cost of doing business but that other attacks might require a military response, depending on the specifics of the incident.
He has to say this, otherwise the NSA has started an act of war against pretty every country on earth, so it would be pretty hypocritical.
Obama knows this, so he can't go and classify the US as starting wars through their own cyber 'crimes'.
Still, the sophistication of the Sony hack was such that many experts
say they are skeptical that North Korea was the culprit, or the lone
culprit. They have suggested it was an insider, a disgruntled Sony
ex-employee or an outside group cleverly mimicking North Korean
hackers. Many remain unconvinced by the efforts of the
F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to answer critics by disclosing some
of the American evidence.
... it would not be that difficult for hackers who wanted to appear to
be North Korean to fake their whereabouts.Unfortunately the term is thrown around pretty loosely, limiting the usefulness of the term.
Stuxnet was sophisticated.
The Sony hack likely wasn't. Though it was done by a persistent and patient group of attackers.
It's not as if the claims in this article that the U.S. has successfully penetrated North Korean networks (to the extent they exist, anyway) should be any surprise; it would be highly surprising if they hadn't. One might imagine that while the North Koreans are not super advanced, they know enough about how to analyze and remove malware that it might be better to stay vague, even at the cost of appearing less credible, rather than disclose specifics of what communications you're able to intercept. Yet surely, just because the finger is pointing at one of the usual enemies, it must just be warmongering rather than reflecting reality.
(Yes, yes, WMDs in Iraq. It is certainly possible that the U.S. really is that incompetent and/or hawkish. I just don't think it's very likely.)
The USG has lied like a rug about the causus belli and operations of most of its major military adventures since WWII.
If they had convincing evidence of NK involvement, they would find a way to share it without further compromising the collection method. Since the Snowden leaks, every non Anglo Saxon government in the world has had to assume the NSA has its hand up the ass of its IT infrastructure.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap
"Realizing that mere belief in the gap was an extremely effective funding source, a series of similarly nonexistent Soviet military advances were constructed in a tactic now known as "policy by press release." "
As a member of the MPAA, probably the most hated organization in the history of the internet, I'm surprised that Sony wasn't under constant phishing attack. Given their total lack of internal security, I would have thought some angry filesharers would have broken in long ago.
<devils advocate>
The NSA is arguably having a credibility problem at home in the US. It needs to convince the tech industry that there are enemies abroad who threaten their security, and attacks by nation states (who aren't the US) is something that is real.
North Korea is a great scape goat. They can deny it all they want, and we don't care about the diplomatic costs, because it can't get any worse. People can't demand sanctions, can't demand recall of ambassadors, the only thing anyone could demand would be going to war with them, but for the most part, we don't care. They're the crazy uncle of the world stage. So basically, the only problem would be if the NSA got caught lying about it.
</ devils advocate>
However, getting caught would probably be the worst possible thing for the NSA (remember, there is likely still a leaker inside); as it would jeopardize the main benefit from doing this in the first place. So I don't think the risk versus reward pans out. That said if North Korea IS behind it, the above motivation for speaking out is still valid.
Also one was supposedly raided by the FBI at the end of October but that story was never updated.
Regarding encryption bans I've mostly seen justification referencing the Charlie Hebdo attacks (which are assuredly not a false flag).
Personally I believe that North Korean sympathizers were behind the SONY attacks given a number of pieces of evidence, but most heavily the #GOP leaks of emails detailing SONY collaboration with the US State Department and RAND Corporation that point toward The Interview being a strategic diplomacy product.
Unbelievable!
Someday I hope I wake up from this dream.
The US yet again going around the world making enemies, and giving them perfectly valid reasons to retaliate.
The current narrative is that North Korea (or sympathizers) attacked SONY for absolutely no reason - or that they wanted to silence free speech arbitrarily.
The United States is regularly hacked by foreign states and regularly hacks them. Hopefully the development of international norms and increased investment in computer security cools global tensions and prevents the kind of infrastructure sabotage that would result in human casualties from happening.
I'm planing to watch POI for the second time, may your god bless you American, and may there be a real-hero like Reese or Carter.
But we all know that most people are just as normal as Lionel, they don't have the courage to face the problem alone. So let's just wait for your bright future. LOL