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North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

nytimes.com

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Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#31

Post by openasocket »

monocasa wrote: post #28
openasocket wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have large amounts of testimony and evidence for DPRK concentration camps, dating back decades. It's not like we are relying on a single person's testimony. For instance, we have satellite imagery of the prison camps. Also, the guardian article that you linked to literally states that just because there are inconsistencies doesn't mean that there aren't serious human rights abuses, including the existence of priso…

> We have large amounts of testimony and evidence for DPRK concentration camps, dating back decades. It's not like we are relying on a single person's testimony. For camp 14, the supposed concentration camp, we have two eyewitnesses. Shin Dong-hyuk, and Kim Yong. Both of their stories are hugely inconsistent, and they get paid based on how crazy their stories are. > For instance, we have satellite imagery of the pris…

There is not one concentration camp, there are over a dozen. And while I could only find those two you mentioned as eyewitnesses to camp 14, we have plenty of other witnesses to the other camps. Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition.

I'm unclear on what exactly your position is. Are you just skeptical of stories like boiling people in molten iron? If so I can understand. Do you believe that these political re-education camps exist? What about the policy of sending an entire family, including children, to prison if one member of it commits a political offense? Do you believe that these camps are host to abuses, including the torture of prisoners as punishment, forced labor, and inadequate access to food and medical care?

Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#32

Post by coldtea »

monocasa wrote: post #13
jedberg wrote: post #6

What I really want to know is how did they learn the skills to do this? And more importantly, if they had that kind of access to outside information, how do they not know about the atrocities they are involved in? Or is it a catch 22 where if they don’t help then they become a victim?

Remarkably low level citizens (basically grad students) have access to public (monitored) internet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orcmmra9oLQ My guess is that, like the incubator baby thing in Iraq, the more heinous crimes are just made up. It's easy to make up stories when there's no way to refute them. The defector stories are already internally inconsistent. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-n…

>My guess is that, like the incubator baby thing in Iraq, the more heinous crimes are just made up. It's easy to make up stories when there's no way to refute them.

It's also a nice way to prop up the "enemy du jour". You wine and dine some people who got out, and they'll tell any kind of horror story you'd like to hear.

Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#33

Post by compcoffee »

jedberg wrote: post #6

What I really want to know is how did they learn the skills to do this? And more importantly, if they had that kind of access to outside information, how do they not know about the atrocities they are involved in? Or is it a catch 22 where if they don’t help then they become a victim?

>how do they not know about the atrocities they are involved in?

Why do you think this is so obvious? Why are Facebook employees oblivious to the atrocities they contribute to?

Taking domestic propaganda into account, do you think, as a North Korean, your country looks so much worse than the US? From the most cynical view of US foreign policy?

Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#34

Post by rando444 »

openasocket wrote: post #17
madrox wrote: post #10

I work in the entertainment industry for a major Sony competitor. This hack was when entertainment execs started listening to their infosec people. It wasn't just IT. Media apps also got more secure and data retention policies got much, much more disciplined. The paranoia was real. I'd dare say it's why the big social media data retention scandal came out of the election instead of Hollywood. I've always been suspici…

There's some fairly extensive information publicly available in support of the NK connection. I'll point to https://www.operationblockbuster.com/wp-content/uploads/2016... (disclaimer: I worked with the team that wrote that report, though not on Operation Blockbuster itself). That information shows that the group behind the Sony Hack were a previously unknown APT group. Analysis of malware used, C&C servers, and even…

As someone else that's spent a large amount of time looking into this, I'd like to offer a dissenting opinion.

I agree with the analysis linking the groups.. however, the final conclusion is because the other attacks were attributed to NK, then we must also attribute these attacks to NK.

I think these assumptions need to be questioned.

The sophistication of the attacks is so out of proportion with North Koreas abilities, it almost reaches the point of absurdity.

I mean we're talking about an entire country full of people that are denied access to the internet, most do not have computers, and many don't even have the electricity to run them. We're talking about a country where refrigerators are luxury and purchased by the middle class to store books since they don't have steady electricity that would allow them to keep food cold.

When you look at the sophistication of the attacks, it's an amazing leap to assign such sophisticated cyber attacks to a country that runs it's entire computer infrastructure as an government controlled Intranet that people still access over dial-up modem.

I mean even just using Occams razor on the South Korean bank attacks...

You're going to require extremely educated people, who have the requisite hacking skill and mindsets, which often require unfettered access to information that is denied to most everyone, and small details like the fact that the attackers also are knowledgeable in multiple spoken languages and other things that are so out of the ordinary for NK.

What is more likely.. that all of these sophisticated attacks are being done by a country that can barely keep the power on, or that they are done by someone pretending to be North Korea and using them as a scapegoat?

Personally I think it's the latter.

Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#35

Post by TACIXAT »

rando444 wrote: post #34
openasocket wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some fairly extensive information publicly available in support of the NK connection. I'll point to https://www.operationblockbuster.com/wp-content/uploads/2016... (disclaimer: I worked with the team that wrote that report, though not on Operation Blockbuster itself). That information shows that the group behind the Sony Hack were a previously unknown APT group. Analysis of malware used, C&C servers, and even…

As someone else that's spent a large amount of time looking into this, I'd like to offer a dissenting opinion. I agree with the analysis linking the groups.. however, the final conclusion is because the other attacks were attributed to NK, then we must also attribute these attacks to NK. I think these assumptions need to be questioned. The sophistication of the attacks is so out of proportion with North Koreas abilit…

My understanding is that NK works out of a Chinese city Shenyang. [1] Their lack of internet infrastructure does not really matter in that case. As well, if they are working out of China you have to assume they are exchanging information with China. China has some pretty top tier security experts. I do not think it is unreasonable at all for someone in NK to be trained up in how to write ransomware or a wiper.

1. https://www.businessinsider.com/north-korean-hackers-working...

Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#36

Post by TACIXAT »

the_watcher wrote: post #30
OliverJones wrote: post #16

I wish someone could explain the logic of indicting foreign nationals when there's no hope of bringing them to trial. A 179-page criminal complaint must have cost a substantial sum. Justice Department could have spent that money explaining "correct horse battery staple" ( https://xkcd.com/936/ ) to its own people, and so made us all a bit safer.

It substantially limits their movement, as it increases the caution needed to enter any country with which the US has an extradition treaty. As to explaining password security, the Justice Department is a law enforcement agency, not a security agency.

North Koreans aren't known for their international travel.

Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#37

Post by openasocket »

rando444 wrote: post #34
openasocket wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some fairly extensive information publicly available in support of the NK connection. I'll point to https://www.operationblockbuster.com/wp-content/uploads/2016... (disclaimer: I worked with the team that wrote that report, though not on Operation Blockbuster itself). That information shows that the group behind the Sony Hack were a previously unknown APT group. Analysis of malware used, C&C servers, and even…

As someone else that's spent a large amount of time looking into this, I'd like to offer a dissenting opinion. I agree with the analysis linking the groups.. however, the final conclusion is because the other attacks were attributed to NK, then we must also attribute these attacks to NK. I think these assumptions need to be questioned. The sophistication of the attacks is so out of proportion with North Koreas abilit…

I disagree with the idea that the DPRK is not capable of such attacks. They've demonstrated they are capable of creating nuclear weapons and ICBMs, I don't think it's such a stretch to say they are capable of APT attacks. Especially when you consider that the DPRK gets a lot of support from China, which also engages in cyber attacks. It wouldn't be difficult to send DPRK citizens to China to be educated and instructed in computer technology. More difficult, but still possible, is covertly sending north koreans to various western institutions to receive an education in cyber security. Recall that Kim Jung Un himself was educated in Switzerland.

There's also the possibility that the APT group is partially or completely composed of foreigners hired to engage in these attacks on behalf of the DPRK. I know one of the people on Operation Blockbuster believed that this was "contracted out" to some clandestine group. This would explain the attackers being multi-lingual. It would also explain why many of their attacks focus on financial institutions and theft. This focus has been proposed as a way for the DPRK to get international currency to make purchases and evade sanctions, but it would also make sense for a group that is in it for the money.

Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#38

Post by monocasa »

openasocket wrote: post #31
monocasa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have large amounts of testimony and evidence for DPRK concentration camps, dating back decades. It's not like we are relying on a single person's testimony. For camp 14, the supposed concentration camp, we have two eyewitnesses. Shin Dong-hyuk, and Kim Yong. Both of their stories are hugely inconsistent, and they get paid based on how crazy their stories are. > For instance, we have satellite imagery of the pris…

There is not one concentration camp, there are over a dozen. And while I could only find those two you mentioned as eyewitnesses to camp 14, we have plenty of other witnesses to the other camps. Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition. I'm unclear on what exactly your position is. Are you…

> There is not one concentration camp, there are over a dozen.

Over a dozen prison camps. Camp 14 was the "hotel California" camp supposedly, the others are focused on rehabilitation and release.

> Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition.

Dozens of the literally tens of thousands of North korean defectors. But it's only the ones with the sketchy stories for some reason that get the limelight.

> And while I could only find those two you mentioned as eyewitnesses to camp 14, we have plenty of other witnesses to the other camps. Dozens of people going back decades. And even if you consider the entirety of their testimony suspect, these witnesses bare the physical signs of torture and malnutrition.

I mean, they were under sanctions during a famine. Nearly everyone was malnourished.

> Are you just skeptical of stories like boiling people in molten iron? If so I can understand.

Yes, skeptical to say the least.

> Do you believe that these political re-education camps exist?

I believe that prisons should be focused on rehabilitation and integration back into society, I guess you can call that "political re-education".

> What about the policy of sending an entire family, including children, to prison if one member of it commits a political offense?

I doubt that this exists. What's more likely is that political dissonance (which was outlawed by the US in times of war also), is hard to keep to an individual in the extremely family centric societies of the east, including North Korea and would tend to pull in family members who didn't report it.

> Do you believe that these camps are host to abuses, including the torture of prisoners as punishment, forced labor, and inadequate access to food and medical care?

I think that's true of nearly all prisons, including those in the US. And before you go calling "whataboutism", I think that's core to the distinction made between a "concentration camp" and a prison.

My main issue is how it gets portrayed as worse than the Nazis or Unit 731, when there's essentially no reliable evidence to the fact. All in a context where there's a push for a war with them, and we've manufactured evidence for the past few wars.

Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#39

Post by jessaustin »

openasocket wrote: post #37
rando444 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone else that's spent a large amount of time looking into this, I'd like to offer a dissenting opinion. I agree with the analysis linking the groups.. however, the final conclusion is because the other attacks were attributed to NK, then we must also attribute these attacks to NK. I think these assumptions need to be questioned. The sophistication of the attacks is so out of proportion with North Koreas abilit…

I disagree with the idea that the DPRK is not capable of such attacks. They've demonstrated they are capable of creating nuclear weapons and ICBMs, I don't think it's such a stretch to say they are capable of APT attacks. Especially when you consider that the DPRK gets a lot of support from China, which also engages in cyber attacks. It wouldn't be difficult to send DPRK citizens to China to be educated and instructe…

Can we get an estimate of how much money was stolen/earned/misplaced/whatever in this hack?

Re: North Korean Spy to Be Charged in Sony Pictures Hacking

#40

Post by e12e »

jedberg wrote: post #6

What I really want to know is how did they learn the skills to do this? And more importantly, if they had that kind of access to outside information, how do they not know about the atrocities they are involved in? Or is it a catch 22 where if they don’t help then they become a victim?

> , if they had that kind of access to outside information, how do they not know about the atrocities they are involved in?

How many thousands of people work on the US nuclear weapon program - knowing full well the US is the only country to use nuclear weapons, on predominately civilian targets, twice?

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