The people Obama needs to hear from work at DOD, NSA, CIA and yes, FBI, plus academia and the commercial security firms. Get them all in a room, appoint a chair, order take out, have all parties present their evidence and theories, poke each other's evidence and theories, see what theories remain standing and report back to the Oval Office. This is what you do if you actually want to get a reliable take on what happened and who did it. It might not be a definitive answer.

Anything else is basically hot air which will eventually form a fluffy cloud of conspiracy theories.

Yer preaching to the choir here.. I have been saying for 5 years now that Obama's inner circle are completely ignorant of the real world.. :D

How many internet messages to N Korea make a denial of service attack? From what I'm reading, about five. :-)

"Ouch!!! And the ref takes a point away!!!"
-Jim Carrey, LIAR LIAR

:D

Happy New Year.. :D

Michale
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In your wildest, eggnog fueled dreams, how many hackers, analysts with an intimate knowledge of operating system weaknesses, malware traders and such like work at the White House?

The people Obama needs to hear from work at DOD, NSA, CIA and yes, FBI, plus academia and the commercial security firms. Get them all in a room, appoint a chair, order take out, have all parties present their evidence and theories, poke each other's evidence and theories, see what theories remain standing and report back to the Oval Office. This is what you do if you actually want to get a reliable take on what happened and who did it. It might not be a definitive answer.

Anything else is basically hot air which will eventually form a fluffy cloud of conspiracy theories.

How many internet messages to N Korea make a denial of service attack? From what I'm reading, about five. :-)

Happy New Year

That doesn't say much for Obama's inner circle, now does it??

I mean, the "I" word just HAS to come to mind, right???

M -27 Did the US target an innocent country? Innocent isn't the word I would use in regard to anything NK. Did the US target the entity responsible for the SONY hack? That's more to the mark.

I meant "innocent" in the context of innocent of doing this particular crime..

Don't get me wrong. I am all for punishing bad actors even if they are not guilty of the specific issue under discussion.. If they are guilty of ANYTHING, then frak 'em up!! I always say...

I just never expected to get agreement on that from fellow Weigantians. :D

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I would hope the President authorized the FBI release, but I very much doubt the Obama inner circle has the technical expertise to required to vet the FBI assessment...and to compare its methods and conclusions to independent assessments from other government, academic and private sectors.

M -27 Did the US target an innocent country? Innocent isn't the word I would use in regard to anything NK. Did the US target the entity responsible for the SONY hack? That's more to the mark.

It appears that the US has retaliated against North Korea for the Sony hack...

Did the US target an innocent country???

Michale
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Why would the administration want totally bogus info released??

Why would Obama want to protect a Sony Insider??

ESPECIALLY when one considers the kinds of things that is being leaked..

It makes no sense..

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Once those threats were made, it was a major escalation that would BRING a LOT more US LEO AND military forces to bear on the cyber attack.

Grrrrrrr

Michale
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Once those threats were made, it was a major escalation that would be a LOT more US LEO AND military forces to bear on the cyber attack..

To refer back to CW's commentary, it was those threats that pushed the incident closer to the realm of cyber warfare..

As far as the Russian/China I have no doubt that there is culpability, probably more so on the part of China, rather than Russia..

This sort of thing doesn't strike me as Putin's style... He is an old school Cold Warrior...

But China controls NK's Net presence and NK's Cyber Squad, Bureau 121 is actually based in China, so yes. There would have to be Chinese involvement..

But not to the point that anyone can point to China as the culprit..

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Occam's Razor? In what sense is the NK theory simpler than Ru than China than inside job than hacktivists than extortionists.......etc?

The razor only comes into play when you've tested some of the competing hypotheses and narrowed the field.

Sony is 4th in the top five, with 12% of a 10 B$ market, compared to 17% for top dog 20th Century Fox. If your object is intimidation, you don't necessarily smack the alpha dog to get the attention of the whole pack. Go for a careless beta. Hmmm...Sony was hacked in 2011... Weak link?

I don't know how, but you've OBVIOUSLY cheesed off the N Koreans big time!

M - I prefer the term "red team" to Lucifer's Advocate. In the short time since CW.com went black, the U.S. gov has backed way off on the FBI's. fingering of NK. Most likely because other gov. agencies and independent cyber security experts have red teamed the weak FBI evidence. The US press has actually done a rather good job of bringing the uncertainties out in the open.

NK is a plausible culprit, but there are many others. Including the obvious Inside Job.

What is the correlation in dollars between Per Barrel Oil Prices and Per Gallon Gas Prices??

For example.. If oil drops to $20 a barrel, what would that mean in per gallon cost at the pump??

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We all complained and bitched and moaned when Sony gave in to terrorism and said they weren't going to release the movie..

Now that Sony has reversed course now we all GOT to go see the movie!! :D

Personally, I am not a Rogen/Franco fan.. Wife and I tried to sit thru THIS IS THE END... Got 10 mins into it and shut it off.... Not our cup of tea...

Michale
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I am not saying yer wrong.. But employing Occam's Razor it would seem to me that the simplest explanation is the most likely...

Michale
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In my journey getting to where I am now I spent some time working in Hollywood. While there are some great people to work with and know, there are also some of the most toxic, egotistical and competitive people to know.

It is not beyond the pale to see someone going for the two fer on this one.

You alienate talent and your own against the old regime booting them out, you gain power by manipulating everyone into your camp and you increased revenue for the studio on a product that may not have been testing well no matter the tweaks that were done. Studios are just as secret and as paranoid as our government until they choose not to be.

In this case it would not surprise me if Sony participated, but then someone got stiffed, which with lots of information is bad, and decided to teach them a lesson for not coming through on the deal as was struck and released some goodies that should not have been released....

I thought about that as well.. Right up to the point that the racist emails were exposed and the head of Sony Pictures Amy Pascal will likely lose her job over that..

Doesn't seem like a PR stunt to me... Too much live ammo in use..

Michale
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I think The Stig covers many of the state sponsored angles nicely enough for the moment, digital forensics is still somewhat still in a position of having to play catch up to emerging technologies and tends to be a very competitive field resulting in not always having the most recent information on new techniques or attacks.

Given the closed off nature of the NK global internet connections and the fact that they have so few of them kind of makes them an easy target for "digital forgery".

Let us assume for a moment that enough digital evidence has been uncovered to determine a private actor was the instigator but that is all they are able to determine at this time, they have no other clue to use whatsoever. It has got to be troubling for the government to have a mischief maker that can pull off some digital forgery of this nature without leaving a data trail. So....why not go with the "evidence" of NK to goad the actor into more actions, more actions means more traces, more traces means more opportunity to catch the perpetrator and "offer" them the deal of a lifetime.

All of the above assumes that Sony does not have anything to do with this. Hollywood has a history of "ginning " up news and controversy around a title in order to generate more buzz/revenue from what would otherwise be a mediocre product.

At this point I do not think enough information has been allowed in to the public realm for any of us on the outside to form a clear picture of what happened. I would suggest that it pays to be a skeptic when it comes to these kinds of attacks. Digital warfare of this type is vastly different than "stuxnet" and can be far more costly for the wrong party.

And there are much better targets if Putin wants to make a statement about sanctions...

Banks that are actually PART of the sanctions for one...

I understand you are playing Lucifer's Advocate with this, but any motive that you can apply to China or Russia is frail and pale in comparison to the motive of North Korea....

Michale
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Sony hasn't had a hit since The Walkman....

Baa daa daa....

There are much more lucrative targets if one wants to put the screws to US Motion Picture dominance..

Twentieth Century Fox for one...

Michale
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Michale

Motivation? The U.S. dominatrs the motion picture industry. Entertainment is a huge plus in our world trade balance. Sony Pix is a huge player.

Russia is being hurt by U.S. lead sanctions. Payback from Putin. Means and motive

China has a growing entertainment industry that is trying to compete in foreign markets.competitor. Make your competitor blink and gain some market share. Means and motive.

Using NK as cover? Nice plus.

Michale
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While I am sure Russia and China would love to dope slap the US, their choice of a target makes little to no impact in US foreign policy or it's affairs..

I doubt Russia or China would give two farts for Sony.

As with most things, the first question to ask is "Who Has Motive"...

Russia and China have no motive..

Multiple actors plausibly have both motivation

Such as...???

GT,

As I was saying, it would not be the first time our governemnt has played the look over here game.

To what end??

Michale
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Roughly month after the Sony story broke, it's still unclear who pulled off the hack, and what their motivation was/is. False flag covert ops are not exactly unknown, and Russia or China might prefer to give us a dope slap and assign credit elsewhere. Our our own government might prefer to play along: it's one thing to retaliate against isolated, economically insignificant NK, quite another to go all proportional on China or Russia.

I'm no expert in cyber security or internet forensics, but quite a few of the big names in both fields are skeptical it was NK - and they give convincing, if not air tight alternatives. Internet forensics can be tricky (so it's said) and hacktivists, extortionists, with perhaps a bit of help from within SONY itself can't be entirely ruled out to my satisfaction. North Korea's internet may not need external help to crash, coincidences happen.

Multiple actors plausibly have both motivation and means to carry this sort of thing out. North Korea is certainly the prime suspect, but perhaps we should hold of on assigning a name for what to call this attack is until we are more certain about who did it.

Creation of effects in and through cyberspace in support of a combatant commander's military objectives, to ensure friendly forces freedom of action in cyberspace while denying adversaries these same freedoms. Composed of cyber attack (CA), cyber defense (CD), and cyber exploitation (CE).

Which dovetails nicely with what I said above..

A single act against a non-military target cannot, by definition, be an act of cyber war..

So McCain and Graham are off their rocker with their statements...

There! That's for those of you who say I never slam Republicans. :D

The key point is "military" objectives..

As CW points out in his commentary, an attack against an entertainment company has no military value whatsoever..

A cyber attack against a power grid is a whole 'nother story...

That WOULD be considered an act of cyber war..

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President Obama recently depicted the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment as “cybervandalism.” The company responded to foreign threats of terrorism on movie theaters showing “The Interview” by pulling the film.

“Call it what it is, so that the American public understands what the real risks are that we face,” he said.

While this makes a case for calling the Sony hack an act of (cyber) war, consider this..

Say that some country sent a group of commandos into the US as a prelude to an invasion.. Their goal was to attack a military headquarters but they first had to test defenses...

So, they send in one guy to spray graffiti all over the building as a way of testing whether or not the area can be infiltrated..

So, while the act itself is simple vandalism it could STILL be considered an act of war because of the ultimate intent..

It could be this way with the Sony hack.. Those who might be interested in initiating a full scale cyber war with the US might be sending "one guy" in to see how easy/hard it's going to be...

So, this one act of cyber vandalism could be, in the larger context, the opening salvo in a coming cyber war..

Michale
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By there very nature, these activities must be done in secret..

A country that can't have secrets will not last the day....

Michale
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Keep the donations coming in!!

No Ads and less Michale! How can you go wrong!!?? :D

Michale
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The Sony hack was really nothing more than CyberVandalism.. The threats to attack theaters was threats of terrorism as you say..

My only nitpick:

The word is "Stuxnet," and it is the name of a computer virus. In secret -- with no public debate or discussion in Congress -- America (and possibly Israel) may have developed this virus for a very specific reason, and then unleashed it on the internet to do its damage.

Since when do we have public debate in Congress over intelligence operations before the fact??

And that is what the cyber-attack on Iran was. An intelligence operation..

No, we are not in a declared war with Iran. But we are certainly in a cold war with Iran..

And with very good reason. Iran must simply NOT be allowed to possess nuclear weapons.. And practically ANY steps taken to prevent this from occurring is justifiable given the enormity of the threat that it represents..

It all boils down to one true concept in any war, cyber or otherwise...

The ends justifies the means...

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