WhatFinger


If you're getting ready to throw in with this style of attack, why play your best cards over The Interview?

Oh terrific: U.S. thinks China, Iran or Russia may have helped with hacker attack on Sony



Has it occurred to you amidst all the coverage of the Sony hacker attack that the whole thing seems unusually sophisticated to be coming from the Norks, who are better known for making grand claims they can't back up and initiating missile tests that turn out to be duds?
Well, you may have been on to something. The U.S. government thinks the evidence in the case suggests North Korea had some help, and guess who the prime suspects are:
The U.S. investigation into the recent hacking attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment has turned up evidence that does not point to North Korea as the "sole entity" in the case, but rather, raises the possibility that Iran, China or Russia may have been involved, an intelligence source told Fox News on Thursday. Earlier Thursday, Fox News confirmed that the FBI is pointing a digital finger at North Korea for the attack. The source pointed to the sophistication of malware “modules or packets” that destroyed the Sony systems -- on a level that has not been seen from North Korea in the past -- but has been seen from Iran, China and Russia. There is no evidence of a forced entry into the Sony systems, pointing to an insider threat or stolen credentials. And the first emails sent to Sony, described as blackmail or extortion, included demands unrelated to the movie. The malware had two destructive threads, the source said: it overwrites data and it interrupts execution processes, such as a computer's start-up functions. After the initial attack, the FBI warned the industry that the malware can be so destructive that the data is not recoverable or it is too costly a process to retrieve. The intelligence source added that the forensic evidence suggests that the final stage of the attack was launched outside North Korea's borders -- creating some plausible deniability.

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I don't have any doubt that the three regimes mentioned would love to master the art of attacking U.S. corporations in this way. It gives them all kinds of leverage in geopolitical matters, especially when we have an administration that is not exactly known for hanging tough in diplomatic talks about anything whatsoever. Harder to understand, though, is why they would want to test the idea in the service of this particular cause, and especially in partnership with a regime that at least the Chinese and the Russians recognize is pretty unstable and if anything more of a problem child than a valued ally. Surely neither of them cares if Kim Jong Un is offended, and they probably wouldn't even be all that bothered if he was blown up in real life. If you're getting ready to throw in with this style of attack, why play your best cards over The Interview? Maybe all this points to Iran. There would be less daylight between Bowl Cut Jr. and the Mad Mullahs on the crazy scale, and Iran is in a bad way right now with the price of oil plunging, especially with increased production in the U.S. driving much of it (although not because of anything Obama is doing). But if Iran has the capacity to do this sort of thing, why not target oil drillers rather than the makers of a dopey movie. Or is it a matter of the Norks having the hacker brigade at the ready but needing some of the technology to really make it work? All I know is this: There's no way a foreign enemy could ever penetrate our shores, and they all know that. But there's apparently very little stopping them from infiltrating our IT infrastructure, and if the film studios or the cinemas are any indication, the U.S. business community is willing to fold pretty easily in the face of an attack. You'd like to think the U.S. national security community had anticipated this type of attack and had developed some protocols for it. If current events are any indication, you might have been wrong. Someone had better think of something quickly.


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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