FBI: North Korean Hackers "Got Sloppy", Leaked IP Addresses 219
An anonymous reader writes "The FBI launched a PR counterattack against skeptics of the assertion by the US government that North Korean hackers were responsible for anonymous threats received by Sony before its scheduled premiere of the film The Interview. Sony initially cancelled the Christmas day release, but later relented after receiving extensive criticism. In a speech at a New York City cybersecurity conference hosted by Fordham University, FBI Director James Comey said that while the attackers concealed their identify by using proxy servers, on occasion they "got sloppy" and made direct connections, exposing their true IP addresses; these indicated a North Korea origin. Comey also mentioned additional corroborative evidence, including patterns matching those seen in previous attacks known to have come from North Korea, but was guarded on details. Also at the Fordham conference, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper mentioned recently meeting the Kim Yong Chol, the North Korean general in charge of cyberwarfare. Clapper emphasized Kim's belligerence and lack of a sense of humor, implying that an advance screening of "The Interview" would likely have enraged and provoked the North Korean brass."
Clean...Too Clean... (Score:2, Insightful)
How do they know that the connections from North Korea weren't proxied themselves?
If I was going to launch a hack as major as the Sony one, I'd absolutely 100% be sure to leave some breadcrumbs (perhaps even multiple trails) to cover my own tracks.
Cliche movie quote: "he's clean...too clean..."
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Lol its like some people never played Uplink. Even the game had the log deleter and the log modifier, which was used in the frame job contracts. Its almost kind of a no brainer. and hardly a new concept, what is a botnet really but a way to look like hundreds of other people instead of yourself?
Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Until now, I believed it was North Korea.
But the US government always lies. I'm starting to doubt!
Often, there is no grand conspiracy (Score:5, Informative)
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It doesn't require a grand conspiracy to doubt North Korea had enough lead time to compromise Sony so thoroughly in response to The Interview. It also isn't a Oliver Stone-esqe reach to observe that there are anecdotal reports all over the place of hackers planting false trails to China and Russia to blend in with real attacks from both places.
In the absence of actual publicly produced evidence from someone *without* a history of lying to the public and Congress, it's safe to assume that the "North Korean I
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I would only argue that North Korea has motive (clearly the movie is insulting to a hack dictator), opportunity(the World knew the movie was in development long before its release), and n
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So the whole 'hack' was just part of Sony's 'ironic' marketing of this 'funny' movie then?
Unlikely.
As most readers of /. are aware, any system can be hacked, if enough motivation and resources are thrown at the project. It follows, then, that any hack might also be tracked, given enough motivation and resources.
Sony wouldn't take that risk to promote a movie. Unlike your run-of-the-mill criminal mastermind, they would carefully consider consequences and repercussions.
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So the whole 'hack' was just part of Sony's 'ironic' marketing of this 'funny' movie then?
Unlikely.
As the Coca-Cola execs admitted after the whole "New Coke" / "Classic Coke" debacle... "we weren't that smart but we weren't that dumb either".
So I can see the PR gone wild scenario happening.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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[...]and given any pertanent information like how hackers breeched sony, what attack vectors were used, what exploits were performed (if any) and what if any IDS or firewall technology was complicit in the breech.
Likewise, the public still hasn't gotten the shopping list and blueprints required to make the bomb in the [insert random terrorist attack] attacks.
I do agree the "North Korea did it" storyline seems a bit off.
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"Its also a little too convenient that a country which outright bans american films and that would never have to tolerate its citizenry watching it, happens to care enough to make a retaliatory strike against what for all intents and purposes is a nonthreat."
Apparently dodgy Chinese DVD copies regularly make their way into North Korea, and a number of Hollywood Films are quite popular regardless of their actual legality so I think you're wrong about that. See this story going back to 2012 for example:
http:/ [bbc.co.uk]
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That is what it is all about, accepted modern forms of justice. This evidence thing you speak of where is it, why hasn't it been presented and of course as part of the normal legal process why hasn't it been challenged and validated by that challenge. It is called trial in absentia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Where the accused does not turn up but where the accuser proves their case. Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Any government wants to claim anything about anything, then they must
Crapper? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this the same James Clapper who lied to Congress, and now expects us to believe him?
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Nah, different guy. This is James Comey, the FBI director. The one who's spent the last couple of months heavily pushing the narrative that if Apple and Google allow encryption on their devices, a child will die. Which isn't false, anymore than it's false to say that if Americans are allowed to drive, a child will die. It's weird, though, I can't seem to recall any government officials lobbying to outlaw cars.
I'll give Comey credit for one thing, he's kept a low enough profile that the Nigerians don't yet s
Sounds like the Silk Road (Score:5, Insightful)
The "got sloppy and leaked IP addrs" sounds like the same way the Silk Road server was found. I wonder what parallel construction existed (NSA?) telling the FBI where to look, and what to look for. Of course, we'll never hear those details because, "National Security".
Still not conclusive (Score:5, Insightful)
"Clapper emphasized Kim's belligerence and lack of a sense of humor, implying that an advance screening of "The Interview" would likely have enraged and provoked the North Korean brass."
Well FUCK ME: if Kim Yong Chol can't take a little "jokey-joke" then obviously it was DPRK who stole the cookies from the cookie jar!
"FBI Director James Comey said that while the attackers concealed their identify by using proxy servers, on occasion they "got sloppy" and made direct connections, exposing their true IP addresses; these indicated a North Korea origin."
Well SHIT: apparently when the attackers connect from Eastern Europe: "it's a proxy server" but if they connect from an IP address inside a regime the CIA has a hard-on for pressuring economically: it's a smoking gun.
"Comey also mentioned additional corroborative evidence, including patterns matching those seen in previous attacks known to have come from North Korea, but was guarded on details"
BLAH BLAH "secret evidence" BLAH: here's the problem with sticking your nose up everyone's ass Clapper, even when you "know" something is a fact: nobody believes you because the evidence was gathered through spying and deciept! Even if you manage to fabricate some "parallel" construction without revealing which routers on the TREASURE MAP are poisoned: nobody will fucking believe you because you've lost all credibility.
Essentially, the FBI is saying "Trust us: you know we're hacking everyone else so you can trust us when we say we have SECRET EVIDENCE that North Korea hacked Sony". Everything else is just confirmation bias bullshit.
I'm by no means a penn-tester, but I know the routine well enough to say that claims of attack heuristics having unique or distinct fingerprint are pretty fucking sketchy. 2/3rds of Penn-testers never have to do more than litter "SEX TAPE" cds/usb thumb drives in the parking lot, run a metasploit scan, set up a fake wifi hotspot, or ARP-Spoof the router to get everything they need for total network rape.
If a random hacker owns my box using these tactics, did North Korea do it because we've seen them run Metasploit scans before?
This shit was obviously a for-profit hack which went pear shaped, and then the State Deparment/defense Intelligence/cyber-warfare wing jumped on this shit like a bunch of opportunist dogs in heat. Not the case? Then how about some of that transparency Obama promised us and they can pull the viel off the SECRET EVIDENCE or STFU and quit wasting everyone's time pretending they need an excuse to put economic sanctions on North Korea.
Do it cause "glorious leader has a bad haircut" for all I care, but stop pissing on us and telling us it's raining: I'm sick of being lied to be these assholes.
Actually yes; NK has 1024 IPs assigned (Score:2)
> apparently when the attackers connect from Eastern Europe: "it's a proxy server" but if they connect from an IP address inside a regime the CIA has a hard-on for pressuring economically: it's a smoking gun.
Actually, in this case it actually is good evidence. Eastern Europe is full of open proxies, and you can tell they are open proxies by actually using them as proxies. North Korea has a total of 1024 IP addresses assigned, and fewer than that in use. US intelligence has mapped most of those to indiv
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So yeah, when messages come from the IP of the appropriate NK government offices, it actually is reasonably strong evidence.
Its definitely suggestive. Its hardly conclusive.
Computers in north korea can be botted just like anyone elses. And if I controlled a botted computer somewhere behind a North Korean ip address NAT... well... you know I'd HAVE to proxy through it just for the hacker-cred...
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Except there's no way of telling whether those addresses weren't being used proxies too.
This is an exercise in Bayesian logic. If you had a high degree of prior suspicion that NK was behind this, it'll look like a smoking gun. If you have a low degree of prior suspicion, it won't look nearly so significant. Personally, I'm in the middle. I think this makes it more likely that NK was behind the attack, but I don't regard it as a "smoking gun". It seems perfectly credible that someone who can orchestrate th
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"Clapper emphasized Kim's belligerence and lack of a sense of humor, implying that an advance screening of "The Interview" would likely have enraged and provoked the North Korean brass."
Well FUCK ME: if Kim Yong Chol can't take a little "jokey-joke" then obviously it was DPRK who stole the cookies from the cookie jar!
On the other hand, *some* people have no sense of humor when it comes to jokes/comics about The Prophet (or ISIS leaders) - even though there's no prohibition actually in the Quran (according to Wikipedia). Even *if* the gunmen who killed 12 people at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo the other day hadn't yelled, "we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad," most people would have instantly assumed the gunmen were Muslim extremists and been correct.
Sometimes ducks actually walk and talk like ducks.
Re:Still not conclusive (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod points are to make good posts more visible and even ACs deserve to have their good posts upvoted so more can read them. I often use most of my points on ACs who make good points.
In other words... (Score:2, Insightful)
"We know it, but won't tell you. Trust us".
Sorry, FBI, but I don't trust you this > much. Based on experience.
(Not that I trust -- or somehow like! North Korean regime, mind you).
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"We know it, but won't tell you. Trust us".
Sorry, FBI, but I don't trust you this > much. Based on experience.
(Not that I trust -- or somehow like! North Korean regime, mind you).
I agree with your premise but not your conclusion.
They do lie a lot... but then we get to the whole "Why would they lie?" bit...
We all already hate the DPRK.
It's right to hate them, they're the most evil organization in the world. They still have concentration camps for Gods sakes.
The US government gains nothing by this. They could pretty much do anything they wanted to, short of nuking the place, and I think the general US population would cheer. So this isn't some sort of FUD attempt. The American peoples
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Various empire building "cyberwarfare" types do even if it's to the detriment of other parts of the government that are defunded to feed their growth.
I've spoken to someone who managed to get out of N.K. so I'm well aware that it's a basket case of evil, but we're just being misdirected by self serving pricks in this case. The links were suggested long after the hack and the very convenient story started building after that.
No reason to believe them (Score:4, Insightful)
Clapper lid to Congress under oath. What are the odds he'll tell the truth at a random conference?
I don't feel like looking it up, but I'm fairly sure I remember news stories about the FBI lying as well. (To the FISA court? I forget.) Anyway, their word is meaningless. They are without honor.
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Clapper lid to Congress under oath. What are the odds he'll tell the truth at a random conference?
I don't feel like looking it up, but I'm fairly sure I remember news stories about the FBI lying as well. (To the FISA court? I forget.) Anyway, their word is meaningless. They are without honor.
"Everyone lies" - Gregory House [wikipedia.org]
It must be true (Score:5, Funny)
It must be true, Colin Powell brought a vial to the United Nations Security Council, and claimed it contained a 99.9999% pure North Korean IP.
Playing devil's advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
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Playing devil's advocate, it's possible that it wasn't the North Koreans who '"got sloppy" and made direct connections, exposing their true IP addresses'. Another explanation would be that some other group is responsible and got clever, routing attacks via North Korea to shift the blame.
I blame Xenu
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Nahh, you're playing the conspiracy advocate. In light of additional supporting evidence for the established story you're adding more layers of increasingly unlikely scenarios to support your predetermined conclusion. Don't worry, most humans are hard wired to do it.
Like someone above posted, using a NK IP address as a proxy is extremely unlikely since they only have about 1000 total IP addresses. Lucky for you, the conspiracy onion can support an infinite number of layers...so no, I can't prove it wasn't a
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Playing devil's advocate, it's possible...
Unfortunately, you present not a single shred of evidence, nor do you provide any evidence to counter what the FBI has said.
.
Devil's advocate or not, without any evidence the credibility of what you assert is zero.
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Unfortunately, you present not a single shred of evidence, nor do you provide any evidence to counter what the FBI has said.
The FBI hasn't presented any evidence either - they've merely made claims. "State secrets" is their shield and one that has been previously used to hide lies.
It's impossible to prove if any of the actors are telling the truth. Only independent third-party security firms have released any data, so they get the natural edge towards veracity.
Not experts (Score:2, Insightful)
Stop calling these self-promoting headline grabbers "security experts". They were wrong, and obviously so in a big way, even at the time. They two words "security expert" should never again be applied to these idiots who couldn't wait to call the FBI wrong. The Whitehouse had the resources of the USA including the NSA at their disposal. Anyone who thought their pet theory trumped that is by definition a "security moron".
timeframe? (Score:3, Informative)
This information leaked by Clapper and Comey while not exactly a lie is misleading at best. Without the exact timeframe of the "got Sloppy" IP's it is not possible to determine if this is actually NK actioning an attack or GOP making it look like NK after the fact.
It all comes down to the fact that the NK / The Interview connection was not voiced by GOP until after the press had latched on to that link to point the finger at NK because of Sony pictures being the producer of The Interview. Now if the sloppy tradecraft (very unlikely) leaking a NK IP (175.45.176.0 – 175.45.179.255, 210.52.109.0 – 210.52.109.255 take your pick) prior to any mention of NK being responsible in the press then that would lend strong credence to that assertion. Otherwise it may point to GOP being unconnected with NK apart from PWNing either a machine within NK or via a BGP poisoning attack of a China Telecom router. Which neither China Telecom or NK are going to openly admit because of loosing face. Remember also that most of the machines in China & NK that run commercial OS's do so outside the ULA and are thus unable to keep patched and are thus open to being attacked by many known zero-day issues.
In the end it all comes down to this, governments are very bad at doing business and whoever GOP owes their allegiance or funding to, the attack on Sony was a covert criminal act conducted possibly across international boundaries and thus it needs to be treated as such. So If and when their is conclusive proof of someone who is responsible then legal recompense needs to be sought. Unfortunately international law and covert actions being what it is, it seems unlikely that even given the first the second will reach some resolution. FWIW this is a teachable moment for all large corporations, so start listening to their CISOs and give them the funds and manpower to properly secure their networks in the current climate.
A few signs you're clueless. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you do not understand that every packet in and out of NK is logged then hand in your geek badge. If you do not understand that major efforts over the last few years have focused on being able to scrutinize all that traffic successfully then hand in your geek badge. If you do not understand that all activity including packet size packet count and timing information through NSA managed Tor nodes can be used to trace an attack especially one transferring such massive quantities of data making it impossible to hide even with obfuscation then hand in your geek badge, you truly are an idiot who slept through the Snowden revelations. They KNOW who conducted this attack and they will never tell you why for good reason. Some "security expert" claiming otherwise if no such thing, but you're always find some dummy looking for a headline.
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Your a fucking idiot
Classic. My favorite kind of idiot.
This is getting hilarious (Score:2)
They've been going on about the "elite" hackers North Korea has supposedly trained and deployed, but now they supposedly made an amateur mistake like not covering their trail through proxies?
Shit, man, the US "intelligence" services just provide more and more comedy for the world as time goes on... what a freakin' JOKE.
The hack started more then a year ago (Score:3)
What is more, 100 terabytes of company data is a lot to download. That didn't happen in a couple weeks. In fact, a fair amount of it might have been taken PHYSICALLY from Sony's servers.
Again... hack was in progress for more then a year.
How much bandwidth *do* they have? (Score:2)
I read here that they have a single IPv4 block.
At 100mb/s (with nothing else using it) it would take 3 months to download the "100TB" that is said to have been downloaded. At 10mb/s it would take 30 months. (All approximate). This is end-to-end bandwidth, including all of the hops in between, like these proxies (for when they weren't sloppy).
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I don't believe the North Korea story, but lack of transit is not (IMO) a solid argument against their involvement. I don't think anyone has accused them of downloading everything into their country and sending it back out. If I were a North Korean cyber warrior tasked with exfiltrating terabytes of data out of Great Satan's companies, I'd compromise some vulnerable servers in a country with fat pipes, and direct the attacks from there. A few kbps is plenty to sustain a control channel via ssh/RDP/LogMeIn t
Clapper said that? (Score:2)
James Clapper mentioned recently meeting the Kim Yong Chol, the North Korean general in charge of cyberwarfare. Clapper emphasized Kim's belligerence and lack of a sense of humor, implying that an advance screening of "The Interview" would likely have enraged and provoked the North Korean brass."
Maybe Kim just doesn't like being lied to?
Horse hockey (Score:2)
Like I believe the FBI, that the hackers "got sloppy". They did that good a job, *then* got sloppy? There's no chance, of course, that whoever actually did it *delberately* put those false trails in, no, no....
mark
Was the NSA watching while it was happening? (Score:2)
Clapper: “We could see that the IP addresses that were being used to post and to send e-mails were coming from IPs that were exclusively used by the North Koreans.”
Is he claiming that the NSA was watching the attack and data exfiltration while it was happening? Could they or should they have stopped it?
Re:Got Sloppy? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously? Who writes this stuff?
The CIA.
Re:Got Sloppy? (Score:5, Insightful)
The CIA has learned over the decades that it really doesn't matter how many times you fuck up, or how awful and short-sighted your intelligence is, or even how many international incidents you cause or stupid wars you help start. All that matters is how well you bullshit the American people. And the American people are pretty easy to bullshit.
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Due to the Smith Mundt Act [wikipedia.org], the US government was forbidden from targeting its citizens with false propaganda. The propaganda had to at least be believable given what the government actually knows. In 2013 the Smith Mundt act was amended to remove the requirement for plausibility. In other words: It's open season for propagandists to lie to the public in order to better Manufacture Consent. [youtube.com]
Given this recent blatant reduction in requirement for honesty combined with proof of prior actions of the FBI [wikipedia.org], and
Re:Got Sloppy? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously? Who writes this stuff?
Sony's script writing department.
Can't you tell they've gotten a lot better, lately?
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One minute they're telling us that they're so skilled that they MUST be state-sponsored, the next they're telling us that they're too sloppy to spoof their IP addresses. MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
Re: Got Sloppy? (Score:3)
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On the other hand, it is exactly what one would expect from a diverse group of individual amatures from a variety of countries like many hacking collectives are.
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we do actually, because the pirate bay spoofed their IPs to appear to come from North Korea as a prank a year or two ago.
TL;DR - They never had dealings in "Best" Korea, and it was a technical joke.
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>And now the US' FBI has launched a rebuttal to crickets chirping on Slashdot.
Then you haven't read article after article, plain and simple.
Bruce Schneier and Marc Rogers are two sources that should have convinced you. But they didn't. Because you didn't read their summaries on this. Because you're _not_ reading "article after article."
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Bruce Schneier and Marc Rogers are two sources that should have convinced you. But they didn't. Because you didn't read their summaries on this. Because you're _not_ reading "article after article."
Actually I read those articles and all they introduced was plausible deniability. Which could be done with any hack ever performed. Congratulations. Meanwhile the US names the individuals they think are responsible and even explains how they came to those conclusions. Schneier and Rogers are brilliant and great unbiased reporters in all things technical. But they're not exactly hands on with the data forensics in this case which puts them at a disadvantage.
Let's rephrase the question: what exactly
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:5, Funny)
Let's rephrase the question: what exactly would the US Government have to release to you in order to believe it was the DPRK that committed this hack?
Unedited video of Apollo 11 going to the moon where Neil Armstrong found a second gunman guarding Obama's birth certificate.
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I'll only accept it as evidence if it shows Neil shot first.
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:4, Insightful)
I've not seen anything that the government has released regarding this. I have heard speculation that this was North Korea, but haven't been shown any actual evidence. So to your questions answer: I'd need evidence. IP logs, exploits used written in proprer north korean grammar or something. Anything other than Comey and Clapper saying it was them the bad koreans ... they did it.
The trust of the intelligence community was proven to be broken repeatedly by the FBI/DOJ/FISA/NSA/CIA/IRS. Blind faith isn't an option any longer. Proof or it didn't happen.
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So, you realize that releasing information could give away the techniques used to gather said data. And, in doing so, allow those targeted to take steps to prevent such collection.
Now, if you don't believe these agencies should be collecting info from countries like DPRK, I can't help you. And, I'm not trying to defend anything regarding collection of metadata on non-military/citizens. But, if you acknowledge that intelligence gathering against enemies is an necessity, then you have to accept that some t
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These days it's not an unreasonable assumption that the NSA intercepts, collects, and stores every frame of IP data routed through any publicly addressable router on planet Earth. I don't think it would really be giving anything away to disclose some packet logs.
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Not only that but they're suggesting that the NSA doesn't have as good a tap on the global networking infrastructure as Edward Snowden revealed.
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North Korea denies North Korea attacked Sony. Everybody else pretty much agrees North Korea did it... including North Korea, who claimed Sony was committing an act of war...
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:4, Informative)
"Everybody else pretty much agrees North Korea did it... "
Wait, what? I was under the impression that -no one- thinks North Korea did it. I certainly don't, and that's in part because my government is so -focused- on getting us to believe they did.
And in part because the president is a democrat (pwned by Hollywood).
And in part because of what was hacked, what was released.
(another) data breach is embarrassing. An attack by NK garners sympathy. Also, without this hack The Interview would have made about a dollar.
No idea why 'North Korea did it' can possible be modded "Informative".
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:5, Interesting)
What rock did you just crawl out from under?
Most are in agreement that North Korea did NOT do this.
I'm a Network Engineer. I have been in the I.T. field for 30 years and my specialty is information security. My Job is to break into networks, to make sure people can't break into networks. I'm a professional white hat hacker.
Part of my job is watching the hacking trends. I watch the forums, newsgroups, blogs, video channels, chat rooms, etc. etc. I do this to keep an eye out on the hackers to see if they are planning any cyber attacks on my customers. I also have been watching other cyber conflicts around the world, and Sony has been in a cyber war for nearly a dozen years. They have angered a lot of people.
Sony has a history of not treating their own employees very well, taking hostile acts against their customers, and this is usually a mixture for disgruntled employees.
Any large network would notice several terabytes going over the lines, and we are talking about a hundred times that. North Korea does not have the bandwidth for that, even if they can keep their electricity running, and they are not going to launch an attack on a stupid company over a stupid movie while Obama has been pointing fingers and threatening him for years.
In addition, I know at least 100 other people in my same field and our combined experience is well over 1200 years, and I am telling you, there is NO WAY North Korea was behind these attacks.
The FBI is full of it.
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:4, Insightful)
" there is NO WAY North Korea was behind these attacks."
Thanks Mr Anon. We'll all take your word on the subject even though it's based on having absolutely ZERO inside knowledge of ANYTHING related to this situation.
The spin cycle started very late this time (Score:4, Interesting)
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This isn't to say that North Korea did it, or that the FBI isn't wrong, just that the incentives for them to hype the criminal threat are certainly not inconsequential.
Miltitary versus civilian fund bucket (Score:2)
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"Everybody else pretty much agrees North Korea did it"
You misspelled "Nobody but the FBI thinks North Korea did it"
Look, the FBI won't release ANY evidence. Meanwhile half a dozen bloggers who have looked at the data have pointed out that the preponderance of evidence shows that it was an insider. Like timestamps showing the data was copied at USB 2.0 speeds, for example. How are people missing this information? Are there really THAT many people living under proverbial rocks and posting on /. ?
Obligatory "y
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:5, Insightful)
Satire should NEVER be illegal.
Just go ask Salman Rushdie, a man who risked his own life by refusing to back down from his novel in the face of very real threats to his life. He'll tell you, like he did regarding the Charlie Hebdo attacks, that satire "has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity." Neither you, me, a state, or a group of religious fanatics should get to say what speech is or is not acceptable.
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now there is a controversy going on in India. A top Muslim actor played the lead role in a movie that makes fun of Hindu godmen, has scenes where the prime Hindu deity Shiva gets chased down the streets of India, losing his clothes and ends up in underwear. Many Hindu organizations are outraged, but none of them have urged any of their followers to kill anyone. They petitioned the courts to ban the movie. India has a board of film censors, it approved the movie. The head of the board is a Catholic Christian. She has been quick in the past to ban movies that "hurt the sentiments of the Christian/Muslim communities and might endanger communal harmony". Courts have refused to ban the movie. And all the Hindu organizations are being lectured on tolerance, freedom of expression etc.
My problem with the West is that never find good things to encourage and praise. With all that caste, linguistic, religious divisions and abject poverty India is struggling to be a democracy, to uphold values of freedom of expression etc etc. Ostensibly West wants to promote these values. But most stories about India are about its problems.
In the face of Paris outrage, as part of denouncing terrorism, if they have shown a token respect for India/Hindus, that would send shock waves among the Muslim communities. "You attack us violently, we will show sympathy and support for your enemies, the Hindus" is an angle that might play well.
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Perhaps you never saw Naked Gun 2 1/2? Team America? If I really felt like it, I could dig up quite a few comedies where we assassinate the living leader of a country that is considered to be the bad guy. Strangely, you think you're unique and this occasion was unique. Not going to go on about free speech but the irony is pretty intense when you consider the lack of human rights in North Korea.
I'd love to see what would happen if someone made a movie about the assassination of Obama, while he is still in office, and how the assassination is really funny.
I can't believe that the Secret Service would just turn a blind eye to it on the grounds of 'free speech'. My suspicion is that just writing the screenplay for such a movie would attract a lot of unwanted attention from several 3-letter agencies in the USA.
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Nothing happened to the people that made the exact movie you describe about Bush.
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even then, there's no reason to control what people should make movies about at all. There could be a reason to control what people do in the if they're filming in the United States. For example you can't be filming in the United States and commit actual crimes, like robbing a bank and then filming it in order for a movie.maybe you could open up yourself to problems by filming a movie about specific actual people who are not what they call persons of famous people. But these may be civil claims I see torts,
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For example you can't be filming in the United States and commit actual crimes, like robbing a bank and then filming it in order for a movie.
I think you are confused. Actually, filming a real bank robbery (even if you film it yourself) is perfectly fine. The mere act of filming your action (e.g., the bank robbery) does not make the crime legal, however. I doubt that such a film can even be excluded as evidence against you by self incrimination since the camera is not you (although it may be more difficult to establish a chain of custody). People get caught on "tape" by their own security cameras all the time and that is not problem as far as
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we're saying the same thing. if you rob an actual bank in the course of filming a movie, you're breaking a law - bank robbery. I did not phrase my OP well. tbh I dictated the whole post via siri dictation so it kind of came out garbled. maybe even some verb tenses got changed, I don't know.
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That's a great point Anonymous North Korean Coward... :D
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Yup, definitely North Korea! There is no possibility that anyone could have setup a proxy account on some North Korean IPs. Apparently that would never happen. Nope, not one iota of possibility. Those were definitely the originating IP addresses.
Here is what I see as possible:
1. North Korea managed to develop an acceptable army of hackers on their own in 5 years. (No internet in 2009, supposedly)
2. A group of hackers attacked Sony and North Korea managed to get tangled up in this with the release of the
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:5, Informative)
Yup, definitely North Korea! There is no possibility that anyone could have setup a proxy account on some North Korean IPs.
Do you understand how impossible it is to get "a proxy account" into or out of North Korea? Clearly you do not. The have only one single block of IPv4 addresses [wikipedia.org].
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Yes, but they're mostly used by foreigners visiting the place. Which means it's possible they were occasionally proxying through one of those foreign machines. That's far more likely than North Korea actually, though it's also possible North Korean hackers went in (proxy-less) and dug around after the initial breach.
Hackers don't "get sloppy" technologically. They have scripts to prevent that. They get sloppy in the real world.
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Hackers don't "get sloppy" technologically. They have scripts to prevent that. They get sloppy in the real world.
Clearly you have never dealt with actual hackers. Every one I have ever seen has gotten sloppy at some stage, and that was with hackers up to Advance Persistent Threat level. Or did you mean any sloppiness was by the hacker and not by the script, including the hacker's sloppiness writing the script, so the ever-present sloppiness is in the real world? If that is what you meant then I agree. The scripts/programs always do exactly what they were programmed to do, even if that is not what the programmer in
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Sure, they get sloppy, but this just defies logic on every level.
What defies logic? Do you not believe North Korea has the ability or motivation to hack Sony as a result of this movie's production and imminent release (or for any other reason that regime may have given how much logic they appear to employ in their decisions)? Unless you believe the North Koreans were incapable of performing the hack, then there is no problem with logic, only that the evidence that you have personally seen doesn't meet what you demand in order to satisfy you of their likely guilt.
The
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Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, definitely North Korea! There is no possibility that anyone could have setup a proxy account on some North Korean IPs.
Do you understand how impossible it is to get "a proxy account" into or out of North Korea? Clearly you do not. The have only one single block of IPv4 addresses [wikipedia.org].
Why would DPRK hackers be using the DPRK IPv4 address space when they are reportedly set up in China [cnn.com] ? When I visited North Korea 6 months ago, the largest, most modern, and most prestigious hotel in the largest and most prestigious city (Pyongyang) was using dialup for internet access. To a Chinese ISP.
There are too many inconsistencies in the FBI's story. There are too many liars and too many suspects on all sides. Unless someone takes credit, there is no way to know who did the hacking.
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Do you understand how impossible it is for your house to be robbed? Clearly you do not, you only have the one.
A better analogy would be "I have one tree that I have to monitor everyday. I know nobody is lurking in my tree because I can inspect it. You have an entire forest covering North America. How do you know there is no one lurking in that forest?"
North Korea is goddamn insane. I wouldn't be surprise if these connections don't allow SSL and have someone eyeball reading traffic that goes across each IP address and blocking it if they don't know what it is. Did you read the wikipedia article linked above?
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It has to be North Korea! A trusted inside source named Ahmed Chalabi told them so!
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Seems like there would be logs upon logs of suspicious activity (or patterns) from both the time spent connected learning the system / figuring out whats what, and time spent leaching off 100TB, right? If that is how it happened as we're told. I also doubt Korea, but there has got to be a shit-ton of traffic logs that point somewhere.
Re:Countless Comments on Prior Articles & Now (Score:4, Funny)
Trivial.
Set up a really good firewall.
On one interface, install a porn server.
On the other interface, set up a LAN party of teenage boys.
Wait. It won't take the whole 5 years.
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1. North Korea managed to develop an acceptable army of hackers on their own in 5 years. (No internet in 2009, supposedly)
The same way the VPAF (North Vietnam) went from no air force in 1959 to a combat capable air force flying Russian jet fighters in 1964... They sent their pilots to be trained in the Soviet Union.
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eerily similar to the claims made by Cheney that there WMDs in Iraq. We're still looking for those.
You appear to have missed recent news reports stating that ISIS is using chemical weapons they obtained from storage locations in Iraq, where they had been put by the Saddam regime.
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(the Bush admin meant Uranium-fulled weapons like nukes)
If they had meant only nuclear weapons, they would have SAID nuclear weapons. They meant WMDs, including chemical weapons. The Bush Administration was condemned because they said Saddam had WMDs, and supposedly none were found when the U.S. invaded. Yet, now ISIS is reported to have WMDs they obtained from storage facilities in Iraq. Of course, all of this overlooks the fact that the primary reason which the Bush Administration gave for invading Iraq was that Saddam was egregiously violating almost every a