US Slaps Sanctions On North Korea After Sony Cyberattack 231
wiredmikey writes: The United States imposed financial sanctions Friday on North Korea and several senior government officials in retaliation for a cyber attack on Sony Pictures. President Obama said he ordered the sanctions because of "the provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies (PDF) of the Government of North Korea, including its destructive, coercive cyber-related actions during November and December 2014." The activities "constitute a continuing threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States," he added, in a letter to inform congressional leaders of his executive order. The new measures allow the Treasury Department "to apply sanctions against officials of the Government of North Korea and the Workers' Party of Korea, and persons determined to be owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of" these bodies.
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By what authority does the president impose sanctions?
We're bigger than they are. Alternately, you can invoke any particular deity, the gold standard, the Smoot-Hawley act or just being in a bad mood.
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Re:President Obola's Authority? (Score:4, Interesting)
Gold isn't generally a good investment. There are exceptions however and one of the big ones is what Beck took advantage of. Realizing that the housing market was about to collapse, which in retrospect should have been obvious and evidently it was obvious to Beck at the time, Beck pulled his money out of the stock market and bought gold. Given the fallout that occurred when all those banks tanked and had to be bailed out stocks dropped out and gold spiraled up having a twofold payoff for those who saw it coming. Not only did they avoid losing their ass in stocks but they more than doubled their money on gold. What most people did wrong then was to buy gold after it has gone out of sight. Once you miss the boat you might as well go back home because it's not coming back to port for a looooong time. You always pick up gold when it's cheap. It's a long term safe investment. Right now it's too fucking high to buy. Beck's fat little ass got rich as hell though and then he made millions more hawking it as an investment.
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Gold isn't a bad investment all by itself. What is bad is a strategy that buys gold as if it can overcome the need for market research and diversification.
There are times that you increase your investment in gold, or bonds, or stock. Those depend on the characteristics of the investment and how the overall economic situation is panning out, but such a move nearly always takes the form of adjusting your exposure, not completely divesting other forms of investment.
Of course, the biggest problem is that most
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I remember when the housing market collapsed and I lost almost 50K out of my 401 account. Most of my co-workers freaked and started transferring all their money from the stock fund to government bond fund. I remember telling them it was too late. They had already lost their money and the only way to get any back was to stay with the stock fund until it came back around. I stayed with it and eventually I caught the wave when it rebounded. People that react to the market are already too late. If you don
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I remember telling my wife how high gold had gone and she went into her jewelry box and got out a handful of old broken necklaces, a ring she didn't like and about 15 single ear rings missing their pair. I took it down to the local jewelry store and he was paying out about 25 percent more than the guys advertising on TV. I got almost 500 dollars off that junk gold. I was amazed. One thing about gold, when things go to shit it suddenly becomes valuable.
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My Dad is a big Beck fan and even he called bullshit on that gold advertisement of his.
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I remember and see those ads all the time. I remember disregarding them until my dad came to me asking about them. Took me about 5 minutes of Googling before I was told they were not as rare as the ad sa
i heard that Sony hack was insiders (Score:2, Insightful)
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Did /. author any of TFAs?
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I've seen /. do that a lot.
Rhyme unintentional until after the fact, in which case I claim © 2015.
Re:i heard that Sony hack was insiders (Score:5, Insightful)
So you heard something on the internet, and that's automatically factually correct?
Re:i heard that Sony hack was insiders (Score:5, Funny)
"You can't believe everything you read on the internet"
-Abraham Lincoln
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"There is two things that are infinite: the universe and the internet; and I am not sure about the universe."
- Albert Einstein -
Re: i heard that Sony hack was insiders (Score:2)
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"Abraham Lincoln is a murderous thug" -- dying vampire
Re:i heard that Sony hack was insiders (Score:5, Insightful)
So you heard something on the internet, and that's automatically factually correct?
You mean like the idea Sony was hacked by North Korea? That seems to be based on as flimsy of evidence.
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An official statement from the FBI isn't exactly the same as some anonymous blog.
You can doubt the FBI all you want, but I don't know of anyone else having access to the primary evidence involved.
And as the other reply alluded to, what would be the motive for anyone else besides North Korea? It would have to be a very psycho ex-employee to risk going to jail for the rest of their lives for no personal gain. The threat to bomb theaters showing the film doesn't fit the disgruntled employee theory at all.
Re:i heard that Sony hack was insiders (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude Seriously, I mean really, Dude, seriously?! Why the bloody hell do you think we have courts, exactly because when it comes to any three letter agency from any bloody where in the world or any police forces or even those police forces with insanely bloated egos calling themselves law enforcement, because "WE DON'T FUCKING BELIEVE YOU, FUCKING PROVE IT" and the court of law is our appointed place for them to prove it (yes it has to be shouted because it has become all too blatantly obvious that they are not paying attention to basic required principles of law and justice).
Although of course American Exceptionlism demands that foreigners receive no rights with regard to the US, be it justice or even their own lives but seriously guys played out on the internet that looks really really bad to the rest of the worlds politicians especially when your political leaders, no matter how minor, waffle on like that because they believe Americans like to hear that kind of talk.
Not to forget the US has very much become the boy who cried wolf in the eyes of the general global public and low very much has to publicly prove anything it claims.
Re:i heard that Sony hack was insiders (Score:5, Insightful)
And as the other reply alluded to, what would be the motive for anyone else besides North Korea? It would have to be a very psycho ex-employee to risk going to jail for the rest of their lives for no personal gain. The threat to bomb theaters showing the film doesn't fit the disgruntled employee theory at all.
And very targeted and embarrassing release of insider emails and documents doesn't really fit the North Korea theory very well. I mean, their *official spokesperson* released a statement (sic): "The U.S., a big country, started disturbing the Internet operation of major media of the DPRK, not knowing shame like children playing a tag." Just don't think they are going to be concerned that much with internal Hollywood politics when they can't even manage to translate one sentence into proper English.
Also, apparently the whole GoP reference and Interview theater threats only came up 3 weeks into the hack; one popular opinion is it was misdirection to muddy the investigation (if so, it sure worked!) And you'd think they'd lead with that if that was their original intent...
But anyway, at this point neither argument is very convincing. There just isn't any (public) hard evidence either way. Some claim the FBI has "proof they aren't showing" - if they want people to believe them, they might want to release that. The US government hasn't really built a very trusting relationship with its citizen these days...
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An official statement from the FBI isn't exactly the same as some anonymous blog.
The FBI, that well-known organisation with large amounts of experience and jurisdiction over international matters? The CIA and NSA earlier this year made it clear that they did not have the capacity to accurately attribute cyber attacks and that any US policy based on accurate response in this area would be a mistake, so it's good to know that the FBI is more competent than their fellow agencies in this regard.
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More like based on "convenience." True professionals (unlike the government agencies in question) have come forward several times with what effectively amounts to proof that NK couldn't possibly have hacked Sony. The government is simply using this as a tool to get more leverage against NK. Can't say I blame them, because "deception and manipulation" is the name of the game in government/politics, but it's still just BS.
I mean...when the hacker "organization" comes out and says "we're not north korea," and
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No, the United States government made a claim about a hostile action by an unpopular country, and that's automatically factually incorrect.
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This sentence is false.
The person who said that was lying.
Re:i heard that Sony hack was insiders (Score:5, Insightful)
Colin Powell assured me that it was North Korea, and that we must act NOW. And that's good enough for me!
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Toad wins the silver (Score:2)
We wouldn't want the next .torrent dump or barely-coherent pastebin screed to be a mushroom cloud, would we?
Mushroom clouds in the background [snescentral.com] look like fuzzy, fuzzy fungus.
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Nothing new.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I posted last week the same thoughts, even providing links to other professionals who ask "Where any evidence demonstrating that North Korea is the culprit?". I was subsequently rated a "TROLL" for linking the Wired Article and asking the question. Specifically stating like you, that it's become propaganda and facts don't seem to matter. Since people seem to be too lazy to read the Wired article (or any others) here [youtube.com] is a 30 minute video.
The quote "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself." surely comes to mind, and since people don't seem to be able to discern fact from opinion these days it's an easy game for propagandists to play.
Why is it relevant? Because sanctions against the DPRK will not hurt the people in charge of the DPRK. They will have their food, wine, and women (or what ever they prefer) no matter what. North Korea can get what ever they need through China, and already does in large part. The people who will be suffering are those already starving.
Not only is the punishment unjustly targeted, but it harms exactly the _wrong_ people.
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Agreed.
Even if we assume DPRK is responsible sanctions against autocracies and oligarchies are mostly stupid. As you say its not like they hurt the person(s) that are really the bad actors.
What we have done with Russia is partly correct in that some effort was made to go after the assets of heads of state, etc rather than just imposing blanket trade embargo rules on the entire nation. It probably isn't a big enough lever though.
In the case of this smaller dictatorships the only ethical responses are incap
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What we have done with Russia is partly correct in that some effort was made to go after the assets of heads of state, etc rather than just imposing blanket trade embargo rules on the entire nation. It probably isn't a big enough lever though.
I'd say the Russian sanctions are overwhelmingly correct. Putin has an 80% approval rating, which means the Russian people agree with what he did. In that case, they are going to need to accept the consequences of a recession in 2015. If Russia doesn't want to play nice with the rest of the world politically why should the rest of the world play nice with them economically?
In the case of NK, though, these sanctions are just for show. NK doesn't have a global economy to damage, and certainly doesn't have
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I'm not convinced that NK was directly responsible in this, either (if they FBI as they claim have strong unreleased evidence, release it!)
But if you actually RTFA (or RTF government document) this is not going to hurt "the people". The people in North Korea have no Internet access or money to invest in foreign banks.
In theory they are just targeting financial transactions of North Korean agencies and senior officials. In practice, come on, how many of them have significant financial transactions in the U
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How is this insightful? The Slashdot blurb doesn't mention anywhere that North Korea is responsible, it just says that the US is imposing sanctions based on it. Are you disputing that the US is imposing sanctions?
Also, what was this authoritative source that proofs beyond any doubt that it wasn't North Korea?
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not north korea, is slashdot becoming just another source for government misinformation and propaganda???
First of all, if you review the "Evidence" provided by that "security firm" you quickly learn that there is no evidence and this is more of a PR stunt. In fact, if you look at all of the interviews with them, every single one of them was with their "Head of media relations" I mean... come on... they're not even trying to hide it.
But lets assume their wild-ass-guess is correct...
So an insider helped a hacking group attack Sony... that's their theory. Ok... and why couldn't that hacking group be part of the N
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That's ironic. Vint Cerf confirms that Al Gore has been quite instrumental in creating the internet. Which is what Al Gore also said. He never said he invented it.
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not north korea, is slashdot becoming just another source for government misinformation and propaganda???
I figure this article isn't misinformation and propaganda, but an avenue for an active discussion of dissent.
I read an article on North Korea not being responsible for the Sony intrusion; I'm fairly sure on http://arstechnica.com/ [arstechnica.com] mayhaps within the article itself a key phrase used through out was "I can't believe I have to say this". Looking for the article I Googled: sony I don't beleve I have to say this" -with the misspelling or not
At this time of the first 20 hits or two pages, all call BS on the claim
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News is now from "intelligence agencies and government officials".
Some part of the US gov and its contractors really wants a cybercrime boondoggle.
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"I am not making any of this up. Can I work for the State Department now?"
No, you're honest so you're not qualified.
LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt they care. N. Korea gets all of their shit from China and China ain't going to quit supplying them just because the US government said so.
This is just another show of theatrics by the idiots in charge of the USA to make it look like they actually have some kind of authority.
And why not on South Korea for slavery??? (Score:4, Interesting)
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The Slave Islands are the worst kept secret in South Korea.
http://www.news.com.au/world/a... [news.com.au]
The entirety of geopolitics is now and always has been a gigantic exercise in kettles calling pots black.
sanctions on a country we have no interactions? (Score:2)
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The way it works is ... (Score:2)
... the hackers implicate NK because, well, NK.
The NKs deny and threaten.
The FBI says NK is "implicated."
POTUS reads that as, "We have evidence."
Norse says it's an inside job.
POTUS hits NK with sanctions because, well, NK.
Re:The way it works is ... (Score:5, Insightful)
POTUS hits NK with sanctions because, well, cause Merika that's why.
There fixed that for you.
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No.
The outcome is the same, but POTUS is simply anti-NK for political reasons and stuff.
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Private matter? How is that?
Yes, there is a private enterprise involved, however the matter is piracy on american soil, breaking american laws by a foreign country. That is how a private matter becomes a POTUS matter. If you remove the foreign country from the equation, it is still a POTUS matter since it is related to the domestic laws and law enforcement is then involved.
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FBI evidence is laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
http://marcrogers.org/2014/12/... [marcrogers.org]
"So in conclusion, there is NOTHING here that directly implicates the North Koreans. In fact, what we have is one single set of evidence that has been stretched out into 3 separate sections, each section being cited as evidence that the other section is clear proof of North Korean involvement. As soon as you discredit one of these pieces of evidence, the whole house of cards will come tumbling down."
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Look, if we had to spell out every bit of "evidence" we have concerning how we KNOW NK was involved, we'd have a thousand denialists like you hyper-analyzing every letter and word screaming NO EVIDENCE when we have clearly outlined that we know NK did it. Dude just trust us, we've got this.
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That's right, the US government would never lie to the press.
Re:FBI evidence is laughable (Score:5, Funny)
I'm confused. When did we discover oil in North Korea?
Great framework (Score:4, Funny)
I really look forward to similar language being used by foreign countries that the US got caught spying and hacking on and the ensuing financial sanctions against the US as well.
Re:Great framework (Score:4, Informative)
Two words: Trade War
You can only sanction an economy that has a mostly one way trade relationship with you. Otherwise you tend to hurt yourself as much or more than you hurt them.
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They'd kill themselves - the current slow but steady rise in the RMB is hard enough on their central bank already (as it means a steady decline in the value of their main asset: their massive USD holdings).
Explain it like I'm five (Score:2)
I _really_ don't get it.. Sony, a _Japanese_ company, and the US is going world police cop. I understand that Hollywood has a stake in this perhaps, but what political reason are they using to legitimize this?!
Sony Pictures == Columbia, a California company (Score:5, Informative)
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. used to be called Columbia Pictures. Headquartered in Burbank, California, it's run by an American CEO and produces American films for an American audience. It was renamed after Sony bought almost half of the stock.
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Ah right, thanks for that.
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It's an American subsidiary of a Japanese Corporation. It's in the US but it answers to Sony in Japan. Japan and the US are tied together by trade agreements and military alliance. An attack on Japan is generally treated like an attack on the US.
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Someone call Angela Merkel (Score:2, Insightful)
I hear her phone got hacked or something.
They're sticking with this story? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Justice served. Just like when we invaded Iraq for their involvement in 9/11.
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Well, we actually knew that was false (not counting the wilfully ignorant). This we're only 99% sure about.
just submitted comment to whitehouse.gov (Score:2, Insightful)
As a slightly-more-in-touch segment of the population, many of us already discounted the FBI's claim against NK, and (I hope) nearly all of us now understand that it was an inside job. Let President Obama know that his sanctions just make him look foolish.
No evidence either way (Score:3)
There is very little public evidence proving or disproving who conducted the hack. That is as much as anyone knows as a fact.
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Bruce Schneier has an interesting analysis (Score:5, Informative)
Bruce Schneier posted an analysis [schneier.com] on his blog that points out a few things.
The timestamps on the data suggest that it was downloaded at USB2.0 speeds, and happened on the day that Charles Sipkins, Sony Pictures' head of corporate communications, publicly resigned.
The USB2.0 speeds implies an inside job, and the timing of Sipkins' resignation is suspicious.
What was the evidence for NK again?
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I keep seeing in the media of the figure of 100 terabytes of information was downloaded by hackers from Sony Pictures. Is this figure true? How the hell does one download that much data at USB 2.0 speeds? It would take years.
Something doesn't smell right about this whole thing. Would Sony even have that much data to download? And did they really keep it all under the same security mechanisms that were easy for hackers to defeat? I would expect a large diversity of systems and security protocols across su
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That hackers defeated the security, doesn't necessarily mean it was easy to do so.
As I understand it, it was related to social engineering - they managed to get their hands on actual user accounts and passwords, so could log in tot the network the intended way. There is nothing that stops a hacker the moment they have valid credentials, credentials that are meant to give access.
Any network is by nature vulnerable as it is designed to allow people to get in. Without that option, the network would be useless
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Nice window dressings, there (Score:2)
authorizing targeted sanctions that would deny designated persons access to the U.S. financial system and prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in transactions or dealings with it.
So we have a list of "bad guys" who aren't allowed to do business with US companies. That doesn't seem particularly useful, as they were likely prohibited from doing that before by virtue of the fact that we don't have relations with the DPRK anyways.
Although being as the allegations against DPRK are flimsy at best, making a public statement of existing sanctions and calling them "new" might not be a bad move.
Evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
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Agreed. It's Iraq, Saddam Hussein and his WMDs all over again.
Not a shred of verifiable evidence given - we just have to believe what those in power say - and accept more death and destruction.
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Relax about the evidence thing. This is how superpowers do things. If you don't know stuff then just make it up, no-one's going to argue.
The USS Maine blew up from a boiler and ammunition explosion and that was enough for the US to start the 1898 Spanish-American War.
Wars are odd things, they can be started by a stamp http://bigthink.com/strange-ma... [bigthink.com], :)
a Newspaper where "Hearst was personally dedicated to the cause of the Cuban rebels" your Spanish-American War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... [wikipedia.org], or a cow crossing an imaginary line, no cite it was an old and local war between clans (damn hard to Google)
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Reality will one day catch up with USA, and that day is approaching, rapidly
That would be when the F-35 becomes the U.S's fighting forces main jet and shot down where ever it goes.
Just block their IP netblocks (Score:4, Insightful)
They only have two, 175.45.176.0/22 and 210.52.109.0/24 as far as I can tell. It's not like we'd be blocking the general population of NK.
Source [wikipedia.org].
Why not sanction Sony? (Score:2)
"Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them." --W. Edwards Deming
Why Sony (Score:4, Insightful)
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So "due process" is a thing of the past? (Score:2)
Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony is like 0.00000001 of our economy. Most of us don't care if they fail and disappear entirely.
Actually, most of us would like to see them sink into obscurity. Might suck for the half dozen Slashdotters who are still using Sony Walkman, but them's the breaks.
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Might suck for the half dozen Slashdotters who are still using Sony Walkman, but them's the breaks.
Or it might not. It's not like Walkmans' phones home, or are tied to a walled garden, or only sync with one piece of software.
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So this is Obama's attempt to prove the statement true?
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Damn. I never thought of that. I bet you're right.
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You're delusional. Most of the free world profits from trade with the US. Sanctions would hurt us but hurt many others far worse.
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You left out Cuba.
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"There is no doubt about it because the rebels announced the news themselves to the whole world before they realized their mistake".
Thank you for your polite expression of dissent. It's fortunate that information like that could never be faked by any group of vicious, self-seeking propagandists who habitually lie about everything. (Which could equally well describe the current "Ukrainian government" or the current US government - it makes no difference as the first is operated by the second).
Unluckily for y