My gut feeling on the Sony hack was always that North Korea was not responsible for it. In fact, I said this at the time:
So, who could be responsible? It could be hackers who are using “The Interview” and the North Korean connection as cover. After all, Sony is a company that hackers have targeted for years. So quite literally, anybody could be responsible for this. Alternately it could be a disgruntled ex-employee, though they would need the skills to pull this off. A deskside support guy isn’t going to have those skills. But maybe a network admin who has some friends with the required skill could pull this off as long as they know enough about the Sony Pictures infrastructure to make this a viable attack. What makes the latter plausible is the fact that there were significant layoffs at Sony Pictures recently. It isn’t too much of a stretch to think that someone who got separated from their job was looking for a bit of revenge.
It appears that I’m being proven right on that front according to Bloomberg:
At least one former employee of Sony Corp. (6758) may have helped hackers orchestrate the cyber-attack on the company’s film and TV unit, according to security researcher Norse Corp.
The company narrowed the list of suspects to a group of six people, including at least one Sony veteran with the necessary technical background to carry out the attack, said Kurt Stammberger, senior vice president at Norse. The company used Sony’s leaked human-resources documents and cross-referenced the data with communications on hacker chat rooms and its own network of Web sensors, he said.
Norse said the findings cast doubt on the U.S. government’s claim that the attack was aimed at stopping the release of “The Interview,” a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The FBI said Dec. 19 it had enough evidence to link the attack to the communist regime, prompting President Barack Obama to vow a response to the cyber-assault.
None of this comes as a shock and I do trust Norse as they are one of the “go to” companies when it comes to this sort of thing. They have the means to prove that someone is behind a hack as well as the means to disprove someone’s involvement as well. Plus they monitor this sort of stuff in real time. Thus if they say that this was an inside job and North Korea wasn’t responsible, you can take that to the bank. By the way, Norse turned this info over to the FBI on Monday.
My only question is if the US Government going to backtrack on their claims of North Korean involvement? I don’t see them apologizing, but they do have some explaining to do. Starting with how they came to the (apparently) mistaken conclusion that North Korea was involved.
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This entry was posted on December 30, 2014 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Sony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Cybersecurity Firm Tells FBI Disgruntled Ex-Sony Employee Is Behind Epic Hack
My gut feeling on the Sony hack was always that North Korea was not responsible for it. In fact, I said this at the time:
So, who could be responsible? It could be hackers who are using “The Interview” and the North Korean connection as cover. After all, Sony is a company that hackers have targeted for years. So quite literally, anybody could be responsible for this. Alternately it could be a disgruntled ex-employee, though they would need the skills to pull this off. A deskside support guy isn’t going to have those skills. But maybe a network admin who has some friends with the required skill could pull this off as long as they know enough about the Sony Pictures infrastructure to make this a viable attack. What makes the latter plausible is the fact that there were significant layoffs at Sony Pictures recently. It isn’t too much of a stretch to think that someone who got separated from their job was looking for a bit of revenge.
It appears that I’m being proven right on that front according to Bloomberg:
At least one former employee of Sony Corp. (6758) may have helped hackers orchestrate the cyber-attack on the company’s film and TV unit, according to security researcher Norse Corp.
The company narrowed the list of suspects to a group of six people, including at least one Sony veteran with the necessary technical background to carry out the attack, said Kurt Stammberger, senior vice president at Norse. The company used Sony’s leaked human-resources documents and cross-referenced the data with communications on hacker chat rooms and its own network of Web sensors, he said.
Norse said the findings cast doubt on the U.S. government’s claim that the attack was aimed at stopping the release of “The Interview,” a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The FBI said Dec. 19 it had enough evidence to link the attack to the communist regime, prompting President Barack Obama to vow a response to the cyber-assault.
None of this comes as a shock and I do trust Norse as they are one of the “go to” companies when it comes to this sort of thing. They have the means to prove that someone is behind a hack as well as the means to disprove someone’s involvement as well. Plus they monitor this sort of stuff in real time. Thus if they say that this was an inside job and North Korea wasn’t responsible, you can take that to the bank. By the way, Norse turned this info over to the FBI on Monday.
My only question is if the US Government going to backtrack on their claims of North Korean involvement? I don’t see them apologizing, but they do have some explaining to do. Starting with how they came to the (apparently) mistaken conclusion that North Korea was involved.
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This entry was posted on December 30, 2014 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Sony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.