I sincerely want to trust the FBI with respect to the Sony hack. However I think we have a right to feel a little ninth bitten, twice shy about trusting an agency’s first pass on national security matters.
So I think it deserves consideration when a surprising number of network security experts with no particular dog in the fight say they seriously doubt that North Korea attacked Sony. Take a look the link and judge for yourself. I think the disgruntled insider scenario where the guy latches on to North Korea opportunistically and midway through the game seems at least pretty plausible.
Needless to say, one way or the other the diplomatic implications are pretty stark.
skerry
Hey raven, saw this video today and thought of your Thanksgiving.
raven
@skerry: My bride is gonna LUV that!
alex
There are two reasons to argue it was North Korea.
1. The Interview wasn’t one of the movies that was leaked. The hack had access to every other movie, just not that one.
2. No attempt at blackmail or extortion. That doesn’t prevent pure revenge as a motive, but I still would have expected a token attempt. And it wouldn’t take much to convince Sony that they had the information.
Bill Arnold
Tx Tim, interesting.
Betty Cracker
@skerry: My kiddo and I were laughing at that video too. Don’t mess with Mama K!
marduk
The “it’s not NK” crowd seems weaker than the “it is NK” crowd judging by what’s presented in that article but nobody’s presented any definitive proof one way or the other. Lots of hand-waving, tea reading and conjecture from the critics, not a lot of actual technical evidence on offer from the FBI. Agnosticism seems to be the order of the day.
Sad_Dem
The part about the language of Korean EFL speakers got my attention. As a former teacher of EFL students of many different backgrounds, I know that there are very specific “tells” in the English of an EFL writer about that writer’s first language. The example in the article is a good one–Korean loads more information on its pronouns, so Korean speakers tend to try to do that in English (“you sir,” “you girls,” etc.). It’s very hard to fake.
Suffern ACE
Whomever it is, they don’t appear to have much in the way of a sense of humor. I think that points to Finnish nationalists, the most humor free aggrieved group in the world.
C.V Danes
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Sony a Japanese company? And since they fly the flag of Japan, shouldn’t this be a job for the Japanese intelligence service, and not ours? Indeed, isn’t this an attack against Japan, and not the U.S.?
If Sony wants the protection of the U.S. government, then it should become a U.S. company. Otherwise, redirect it back to its home government.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@alex: Incorrect. Read the linked Gawker article.
The FBI has not offered any evidence whatsoever, but a lot of really weak speculation. As I’ve said previously, I do this for a living. Sony’s been getting the living shit kicked out of them by hackers, death of a thousand security breaches, since late 2012.
The rule, and the FBI knows it, it “always look inside first”. And with as many people as Sony America has employed (and more to the point, laid off over the last three years) that will take a lot of time and resources that the FBI doesn’t want to and probably can’t put into it.
@C.V Danes: Mentioned this in the last thread regarding but it’s important and needs repeating: Sony Entertainment is an American corporation.
Most major corporations are multinational and Sony is no exception. You set up shop where the expertise is, and for motion pictures, it’s still America.
Plus we tax them a lot less than Japan would, so it’s a win all around for them.
C.V Danes
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
See my post above yours. Why should the FBI be involved in the affairs of a Japanese company?
Tree With Water
If it is the work of a single ne’er do well, I’d hate to be in her/his shoes. Because the weight of the world is about to come crashing down around their word. Unless that person is clever enough to cover their tracks somehow, what chance could they possibly stand in remaining undetected?
raven
Do the Right Thing!
“Look at those Korean motherfuckers across the street.
Bet they haven’t been off the boat a year
before they opened their own place.
Right. It’s been about a year.
A motherfuckin’ year off the motherfuckin’ boat,
and they got a business in our neighborhood.
A good business,
occupying a building that had been boarded up
for longer than I care to remember,
and I’ve been here a long time.
Yeah, a long time.
Hear, boy.
Now, for the life of me…
you know, I can’t figure this out.
Either them Korean motherfuckers are geniuses…
or you black asses are just plain dumb.
Fuck you.
It’s got to be because we’re black.
Ain’t no other explanation.
You know it’s true.”
Eric U.
our “intelligence” community has been trying to demonstrate that they are a clown show since they missed 9/11. It’s amazing we aren’t dead. And the attackers are nihilists, Donny, it’s nothing to be afraid of
CONGRATULATIONS!
@C.V Danes: Replied, see my OP.
mai naem mobile
I personally don’t think its NK. I’m not basing it on anything concrete, I just don’t think NK is capable and they seem to be more into saber rattling with the nuke pgm. I would guess its the Russians or Chinese or a financial person trying to make a buck shorting Sony stock maybe? Or even just making money off the ID theft and using the other stuff to disguise it.
C.V Danes
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Interesting. So if the Japanese affiliation of an American company were to get hacked, we would expect the Japanese intelligence service to take the lead, then?
The reason I ask this is this: these companies are oh so proud to fly the flags of foreign countries to minimize their tax burden until they get into trouble, at which time they come running back to mama America to hide under her skirts. Just sayin’
Woodrowfan
I think Adam Sandler was behind it, angry that someone else was moving in on his “lousy, unfunny, tasteless comedy” territory.
Laertes
Except that Sony Pictures, being an American company, doesn’t fly the flags of foreign countries to evade US Taxes. Why does this keep bouncing right off your head? It’s like you’ve got one fact–Sony is a Japanese company–and that one fact completely fills your head and there isn’t room for another.
I don’t know what the hell a “Japanese affiliation of an American company” is. That use of “affiliation” is weird, and suggests that you don’t have a firm grasp on the actual relationship between Sony and Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Sony Pictures Entertainment is a subsidiary of Sony. That means it’s a corporation in its own right, with its own directors and CEO and so forth, and Sony (the parent company) owns a majority of the shares.
SPE isn’t a division of Sony. That’s a different thing altogether. And it’s not an “affiliation” of Sony, because that’s not a thing at all.
Davis X. Machina
I’m working on a novel where members of the Devil’s Disciples motorcycle gang shoot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but the Austrian government thinks it’s Serbian terrorists.
Hilarity ensues. Not really hilarity, actually so much as World War I.
samiam
BAhah….must be a slow day for politics. Some supposed security experts who are not Korean speakers and do not have access to the info the FBI does have it all figured out.
Great find Tim. Looking forward to your next post about new evidence suggesting a second shooter behind the grassy knoll
Mike in NC
According to shows like “24” and “NCIS” and “Criminal Minds”, the US government employs the sharpest computer geniuses in the world. Chloe or Garcia would’ve identified those hackers in about 15 seconds, complete with their full arrest records, phone numbers, bank accounts, college transcripts, and drivers license photographs. Why can’t the FBI?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@C.V Danes: Laertes makes the point best. Familiarizing yourself with the concept of the multinational corporation would be extremely helpful.
As for lower taxes, shit, that’s a big reason why they are here. Japanese taxes are quite a bit higher. If they were in the Bahamas your point about taxation might be salient.
Stillwater
Nice link Tim. I think it points to one of two things: either the general incompetence of the FBI or their desire to deliberately misrepresent a state of affairs for political purposes.
Laertes
And what the hell difference does it make if it’s an American corporation or not? Do you imagine that if some terrorists started shooting up the Pasadena refinery that the US would let it slide because Petrobras is a Brazilian company? Are you thinking this through at all?
Villago Delenda Est
The whining butthurt from Kim Jong Un and his minions can be heard on Alderaan.
Singular
Off topic but there has been a horrible accident in my home city (Glasgow, Scotland), a bin lorry (refuse truck) ploughed through a bunch of xmas shoppers and killed 6 people, including children.
My stomach was churning because my wife and child were shopping at the time, and George Square is where the lights and ice-rink are. It must have been so fucking busy.
God, it’s terrible.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC:
For the same reason that eludes Antonin Scalia: the FBI operates in the real world where shit doesn’t fall into place right before the commercial break.
MomSense
@Mike in NC:
Well according to Spooks, GCHQ can instantaneously access surveillance cameras to zoom in on you while you take a poo in the loo.
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina: Well, hilarity in the form of Blackadder IV.
MomSense
@Singular:
Oh no!! I’m so sorry. I hope your family is safe. What a terrible thing to happen.
C.V Danes
@Laertes:
I refer to you the definition of business affiliate
or:
Does that make sense to you?
Villago Delenda Est
@Laertes: Yeah, but I’ll bet Kim Jong Un and his minions are as confused about the relationship as a lot of Americans are. All they see is “Sony” and think “Japanese oppressors of the Korean people”.
No one, in the North or the South, has forgotten the Japanese Colonial Period, even though it ended almost 70 years ago.
skerry
@Singular: I am so sorry to hear of this, especially so close to the holidays. Glasgow is such a neat city. Great art.
Dee Loralei
@Singular: That is horrible. I’m glad your wife and child are safe. Those poor families.
Eric U.
@MomSense: I think that it’s really hard to track down who did what on the internet nowadays. I’m guessing that most of the crimes that are solved come down to someone getting careless, bragging, doing the same thing again, asking a question on stack overflow using your own name, stuff like that.
I’ve come to the conclusion that we are all doomed because companies are run by morons that can’t imagine there are people out there that understand the internet better than they do.
C.V Danes
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I have an MBA with a specialization in global business management. I understand the concept of a multinational corporation quite clearly, thank-you.
What is unclear is how far we should go to protect the interests of a company that is part of a Japanese conglomerate. No lives were lost, and nothing really happened other than the canning of a reportedly shitty movie and the embarrassment of some corporate execs. Not much worth pissing off a country that has a nuclear weapon and is just unstable enough to use it, in my opinion.
SatanicPanic
@C.V Danes: do they have a usable nuke? I am skeptical
Laertes
If foreign terrorists within the haven of a supportive state are targeting American corporations, or foreign corporations on American soil, that’s obviously a concern for the US Gov’t.
I’m not at all convinced that that’s what has happened here, but supposing that it is, why shouldn’t the US Gov’t investigate and take whatever action is within their power to take? It’s okay for them to jump up and down on the necks of kids who are just harmlessly goofing off with computers, but when someone playing at Cobra Commander does real damage then suddenly it’s “no bodies, no foul?”
trollhattan
@C.V Danes:
I happen to have mister McLuhan right here….
C.V Danes
@SatanicPanic: The IAEA seems to think so. They might be primitive, but primitive nukes are still nukes. All they would have to do is put one on a truck and drive it down to the South Korean border.
C.V Danes
@Laertes:
Again, other than getting Sony to can a shitty movie and embarrass some execs, there was real damage done? I’m sure that Sony had the movie insured, and will recoup the losses it would have incurred by releasing it. And maybe the execs will be marginally nicer to one another via their email. In the long run, the hackers probably did them a favor.
PhoenixRising
Yes, they have nukes. NK doesn’t have a delivery system to get one to California reliably, but that is another matter.
trollhattan
@C.V Danes:@PhoenixRising:
1. Shipping container 2. Long Beach Harbor.
KG
@C.V Danes: Sony Pictures (which is an American corporation) operates under the umbrella of Sony Corp of America, which, while a subsidiary of Sony Japan, is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (thus also an American company). So, there are legitimate US interests involved in this from a financial standpoint. Additionally, today it is an attack on “a company that is part of a Japanese conglomerate” as you say, and tomorrow it could be a company that is part of an American conglomerate. It is direct (and illegal) intervention by a foreign government into American commerce, that is not something that we can just let go because “eh, it’s a Japanese company”.
As far as concern about North Korea using a nuclear weapon… yeah, they might do that. But part of the calculus of using a nuclear weapon in this day and age is knowing that if you do so, any support you might have from potential allies will vanish. There’s a reason why nobody has used nuclear weapons since the end of World War 2, it is a losing proposition.
SatanicPanic
@C.V Danes: I don’t know, I mean how much damage would a relatively weak nuclear bomb exploded at the border do? If I were South Korean I’d be more worried about the fallout from all the bombs the US would rain on the North. Maybe that’s just me.
C.V Danes
@trollhattan: 3. North Korean sitting in shipping container with finger on button.
Eric U.
@C.V Danes: there is no way the hackers did Sony a favor. This is the sort of thing that is going to cost them big time. Now, if some other company has executives that wake up and insist on reviewing the status of their network security, you could say that the hackers did them a favor. Of course, that is far from a given. We have seen it over and over — T.J. Max, Target, Home Depot, the list goes on.
I think Obama’s “proportionate response” is what is called for. Particularly if there is a mechanism whereby we can stop them from further attacks while also cutting off the country’s leaders off from their personal internet activities
Howard Beale IV
@C.V Danes: Sony Pictures is incorporated in the US.
Howard Beale IV
@Mike in NC:
Logs aren’t necessarily kept that long.
SatanicPanic
@C.V Danes: haha, my thoughts exactly. No way they’d be able to detonate it all the way from the North. If they could detonate it at all. I wouldn’t bet on that either.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@C.V Danes:
Technically, what happened is that Sony purchased an existing motion picture studio, Columbia Pictures. So it’s not quite accurate to say that Sony Pictures is a Japanese company.
Though if it was NK who did or paid for this, I’m sure they’re pleased to be able to embarrass the US and a major Japanese company in the same action.
C.V Danes
@KG: Part 1 of your response is a nice, cogent explanation that makes sense to me. Thanks.
In reference to part 2, North Korea has no allies, no has it shown any inclination to have any. It has isolated itself, which makes it quite dangerous and difficult to control. If people are starving, then the kid dictator who runs the government might just be tempted to set one off to shake things up.
KG
@Mike in NC: because issues in real life don’t get solved in 26 or 48 minute increments. Not even in 120 minute increments.
Sadly.
trollhattan
@KG:
I concern myself more with “North Korea, Arms Merchant to the World.” They already sell (crude)ballistic missiles, how much might a nuke go for? Those ISIL folks seem to generate a lot of cashola….
Tommy
@C.V Danes: I run a VPN (virtual private network) in my house. I take my data seriously. My gut is Sony got hacked by a bunch of dudes running kiddie scripts. They didn’t take the security of their network seriously and got hammered for it.
Bill Arnold
@SatanicPanic:
Don’t read too much into the reported yields of their tests so far. They could have been testing and refining unboosted and boosted weapons. (Or not.)
.
C.V Danes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Yup. But hey, this wouldn’t have happened if Sony had just moved everything to the cloud, right?
KG
@C.V Danes: they’re being propped up, more or less, by China. This isn’t Burma/Myanmar that has completely cut off contact with the outside world. If China turns on them, North Korea is fucked. Any chance of survival for the Kim regime is based on China not cutting them off. A North Korean nuclear weapon going off in Japan, South Korea, or the US Pacific Coast would result in China cutting them off.
ETA: @trollhattan: I could be wrong, but I believe nuclear material can be traced to whoever produced it. So, selling a nuke to a terrorist organization that then goes on to use it probably results in the same end as above. The truth about nuclear weapons is that they serve as a deterrent against invasion – nobody invades a country with a nuclear weapon, which explains why a lot of the countries that hear American politicians talking about regime change are most interested in getting them
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@C.V Danes:
IIRC, the only thing keeping NK from starving to death is aid from China. I don’t know if they’re allies, per se, but China would not want NK to do anything too destructive to the US.
Most of the Chinese imports to the US come in through the ports of Long Beach or Los Angeles. China would NOT be happy if NK fucked with their import relationship to the US.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Tommy:
I’m still putting my money on disgruntled ex-employees. A lot of the people who were laid off were from IT and other tech departments.
Mike E
@Davis X. Machina: I listened to a story on NPR that explored Ferdinand’s route that day and concluded:
A. He was a moron
B. His driver was in cahoots/stupid
C. He was incredibly unlucky; and/or,
D. Brian DePalma directed it.
Woodrow/Asim
@C.V Danes: There’s a ton of real damage. One example: Sony’s going to have to pay through the nose (directly or through insurance) around the released personal data, esp. Social Security numbers, for the impacted employees.
The real damage is that Hollywood is a very tight-knit community, from everything I understand. Having your dirty laundry — esp. the racist emails — out means no-one in the industry will trust you can keep deals secret. And if that can’t trust you, they won’t come to you — and not getting looped in on the latest concepts is a horror story for anyone who’s salary depends on creative talent. Keep in mind this is the division of Sony that’s been keeping Harmon’s COMMUNITY, a low-rated but (generally) critically-acclaimed show alive; they aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.
I can tell you, just from my own personal artistic endeavors, what a few years away from the core of an active scene does — or the loss of trust between artistic types, no matter the money involved. Sony’s going to be really, really hurting for years and years down the line, and in a lot of key ways that aren’t clear right away, like with the Target/Home Depot cracks.
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
I expect that every DPRK ship is tracked to the best of our ability.
C.V Danes
@Tommy:
That is probably debatable. If you take your data security seriously, then you know that true data security is nearly impossible, especially on a network the size of Sony’s. Inside jobs are particularly difficult to defend against. Not saying it can’t be done, but then the cost of the security measures in real terms, and in the operational difficulty it would impose, would be prohibitive.
The NSA is a security agency in the business of spending money, and they got hacked by Snowden. For Sony, it’s all part of their risk tolerance vs. cost. They got burned, but it is probably still cheaper for them in the long run.
Gin & Tonic
Only CONGRATULATIONS! has mentioned it so far, but Sony’s “security” has been shit for years. Nobody in the infosec community is expressing any surprise at all that they got pwned. And the idea that the USgov would retaliate by running a DDoS attach on NK today, as is being breathlessly reported by the ignoramuses on CNN, is laughable. That could have been done by a 12-year-old in Mom’s basement.
Howard Beale IV
@Tommy: I’m starting to think more along the lines of an ex-employee who let the barn door wide open once they knew they were about to get the axe, given how deep they got into the bowels. Most network systems are layered and deploy defenses in depth; to me this isn’t some script kiddie attack-someone knew exactly where to go.
Tommy
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I am with you there. I’ve worked with a lot of the best info security firms in the world . They all the same say thing. Their biggest worry is “social engineering.” A person, not their systems will be their downfall.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Yeah. I think this is an inside job too. And clever to hide their tracks via North Korea.
Who knows. Maybe even a Seth Rogen fan among them. Talk about publicity for a B-list film. It’s known worldwide now.
eldorado
my take: independent black hat org hacked sony. maybe multiple arms of it. nk was presented with an opportunity to purchase this info, because that’s how the black hats make their bones. it’s possible this was done on spec, but i am inclined to think of it as a crime of opportunity.
C.V Danes
@Woodrow/Asim: Really? Remember the “Phappening”? How long did Apple pay the price for that?
Sony may live in a close knit community, but, pardon my expression, its a close knit community of old whores. Sony is on the hot seat today, tomorrow it’ll be someone else. Somebody gets shit canned from Sony today, they wind up somewhere else tomorrow. Sony will weather this just fine.
satby
@Singular: That’s terrible! I hope your family is ok, so sad about those hurt and killed. I was in that area of Glasgow last year, I can imagine how busy it was.
C.V Danes
@Tommy: Exactly. Corporate espionage is a real thing.
Major Major Major Major
@C.V Danes: I’m not sure I would call what Edward “hey General, sir, may I have your password?” Snowden did ‘hacking’
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Bingo.
Tommy
@C.V Danes: I’ve always worked for small firms. I had access to all info. Ever bit of data. I can’t think I’d ever betray my boss. But if I worked for Sony or a company of that size and somebody called me and asked me to fuck with them I might think about if for a few seconds. I am not proud to say that, but honest.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@C.V Danes:
The “Phappening” only affected lowly consumers, as did the Target and Home Depot breaches. Move along, nothing to see here.
But this breach affected a CORPORATION. Most people are thinking about Playstation breaches and the like, but I guarantee you that any network or studio that is partnered with or thought about partnering with Sony on anything is having second thoughts right now.
These hackers fucked with the relationships between giant corporations instead of fucking with consumers. That’s why it’s going to be a much bigger deal than you seem to think.
Baud
FWIW
From what I can find, only the Japanese corporation is publicly traded on the Tokyo and New York stock exchanges.
burnspbesq
@C.V Danes:
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. is as American as The Walt Disney Company.
burnspbesq
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Nothing that is currently in the public eye can reasonably be described as correct, incorrect, or anything in between.
Nobody knows anything.
Major Major Major Major
@burnspbesq: There, now we have an MBA and a JD saying it, is that good enough? :)
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@burnspbesq:
Well, it’s as American as NBC Universal since Universal was briefly owned by a Japanese company in the early 90s. (Matsuhisa, IIRC.) Disney is one of the very few (possibly the only) movie studio that has never been purchased or owned by an outside entity. We devour others, we are not devoured.
Woodrow/Asim
@C.V Danes: They are 2 such disparate types of cracks that I’m really struggling to grasp your point.
Apple didn’t “shit the bed” anywhere near as badly as Sony did, for one thing. Those images, as bad as they are, are a different level of FUD than having a major corporation’s emails dumped out, quite literally, on the streets. That’s one level this operates on, and it’s a level we’ve rarely seen in cracks to-date, because it impacts the trust you put in the company, itself, not just their equipment.
But again — and this is key — Sony Pictures isn’t a Tech company. It lives on the ability to gather talent to produce stuff for sale. This is something you’ve “got to do in secret” — certainly to control creative output. This is another, usually un-spoken reason why creative firms/people really hate piracy; it’s not just money, but the risk of having their work out there, “uncontrolled” (I know, I know…) for anyone to see — and copy.
Having a creative firm that has a rep for not keeping it’s creative assets under wraps is really devastating, and I suspect it’s not something that’s clear if you look just from the Computer Security perspective. I feel like you’re talking like this is Just Another Hack, and I can just see how anyone thinking about taking a concept to Sony is going to wonder, for some time, “is that wise?” That’s a fair distance from “Oh, someone hacked some celebrity iPhones” (that it shouldn’t be is a valid discussion…)
And given how slowly Hollywood types tend to change their thinking on tech…no, I think this is awful for Sony, and again in ways that are not clear, not easily paralleled with other industries. I know that if I don’t feel like I can trust someone to keep my new dance concept secret, I’m not bringing it to them — and I’m pretty open source about my creative works!
Woodrow/Asim
@Major Major Major Major: Oh, it was a hack. It just wasn’t one that took a lot of talent — and sometimes those are the most devastating, because you don’t have to think though the process.
But it was one that the NSA should have already had closed, and that’s where they did go horribly wrong, in very predictable ways.
Howard Beale IV
@Major Major Major Major: The (late) Mandy-Rice Davis phrase applies here-“He would (say that), wouldn’t he?”
C.V Danes
@Woodrow/Asim: @Mnemosyne (iPhone): et. al.,
It is almost a certainty that all of these entertainment companies have been hacked and they just don’t know it yet. The hackers who got Target were poking around on their network for months. Sony was just unlucky enough to get hit in a very public manner.
Network security is asynchronous by nature. The hackers only have to get lucky once; the security manager of even a medium size firm has to be lucky every damn second of every damn day. It is literally you against the world. Nobody can win all the time against those odds.
Sony will come out of this just fine. People will be pissed for sure. Some people will use this as leverage to get a better deal from Sony. But the industry is not going to incur the hit of losing Sony Pictures. Not gonna happen. All Sony has to do is keep its head down until the next company gets hit. Like I said, this is a group of old whores here, and this is just the cost of doing business.
Mandalay
@burnspbesq:
Well I certainly have huge respect for you on the topic of not knowing anything. You are without peer in that department.
C.V Danes
And to expand on #86 above, the fact that Sony got hit was a technology problem. The fallout from getting hit is business problem. The executives at Sony are not technologists, but they are very crafty at the business. They’ll make the deals, some heads will roll, but in the end Sony is a multibillion dollar company. They have deep enough pockets to ride this out.
If their stock is taking a hit, then I see that as an opportunity to buy some. Nothing more.
mclaren
Thank you. As I’ve been saying, this is just more yellowcake uranium horseshit.
It’s so obvious it’s painful. Hillary wants to gin up another war as soon as she gets in office to prove she’s “tough” and “patriotic,” and the military-prison-police-surveillance-torture complex desperately wants the money she’ll provide to get back to those sweet, sweet post-9/11 levels of national security funding, so they’re going all in on the distorted intel and phony claims to make sure Hills gets her war with North Korea.
America has one war party with two wings: Democratic and Republican. This is just the latest Tonkin Gulf incident (most of you are probably not even old enough to remember what that is, but I lived through it, albeit as a little kid).
David Koch
I was just watching a documentary on Pearl Harbor and at the time experts refused to believe Japan was behind it because they were considered to be a 3rd rate power, so the experts instead believed the sophisticated Germans were behind it, either directly by flying german planes with Japanese markings or indirectly by the leadership of Luftwaffe strategists.
in the end, whether it’s birtherism or trutherism or bengahzi or pearl harbor the simplest explanations are the correct ones.
Howard Beale IV
@Mandalay: Your brutal use of the truth shows a clear lack of imagination. (grin)
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@C.V Danes:
MGM thought they were immortal, too. Movie studios die all the time and, frankly, Sony is not a particularly important studio. They have Spider-Man and that’s about it.
So which movie studio do you work for? I think I’ve been pretty open about which one I work for. If you don’t, I wouldn’t be quite so certain you know how the business works. It’s not like selling computer software or hardware.
ETA: And, again, you seem not to understand the difference between consumers being pissed at you and business partners being pissed at you. Corporations don’t give a shit if consumers are pissed, but they shit their pants if their business partners are pissed.
chopper
@burnspbesq:
does anything really exist at all? (head asplodes)
deep, man. i mean, derp.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@C.V Danes:
Here, I’ll try to put it in terms you might understand better. Let’s say for a minute that it was Electronic Arts that was hacked and all of its IP about upcoming games was released. How many of their clients do you think would stick around? How quickly do you think their competitors would jump in to take those clients?
Sony Corporation will survive handily. Sony Pictures Entertainment? I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, if I were you.
C.V Danes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I don’t work for any media company. But I do work for the largest technology company in the world. And I’ve been in tech for about 25-30 years, from engineering all the way up through management. Enough to have been around the block a time or three.
Sony Pictures may survive, or it may not survive. Even if it doesn’t survive, the suits will, because the suits always land on their feet. But I wouldn’t put too much stock in just how pissed people are about their IP. Some people will pull it and go elsewhere, but nobody’s network is secure, so does it matter? While everyone else is screaming about the hack, the people in the suits are busy using this as leverage to negotiate and renegotiate deals. What you consider to be a tragedy is merely an opportunity for them.
Steeplejack
@Mike in NC:
LOL. I love how they’re always “Check the bank’s security camera feed and see where the perps went.” I remember all too many programming gigs where accessing a single database in another part of the same company took months and often turned out to be a fucked-up mess. Good times.
Howard Beale IV
MDAC5’s on all the files or it’s rash,
Hawes
Seems pretty clear that North Korea was in some way behind this, probably paying someone to do it for them. They have spent decades engaging in just these sort of stunts to keep the rest of the world off balance. They fucking kill South Koreans every once in a while to keep things out of whack.
I saw some dipshit on Facebook saying it was good that North Korea stopped the release of the movie because it was “racist” despite her having never seen it. North Korea is like the Osama bin Laden of countries. You really can’t start excusing their shit.
And the idea that this is some super-duper-double-secret effort by the FBI to gin up animosity against PRK doesn’t hold water either.
They do belligerent, aggressive shit ALL THE TIME. They hired someone or managed to hack in on their own and basically fired a massive warning shot about criticizing Dear Leader.
Hawes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Sony may be a shitty studio, but I think we should be concerned when autocratic regimes decide to declare cyber-war on whatever entities that annoy them on any given day.
Hawes
@mclaren: Is your tinfoil hat on too snugly?
It was the Clinton who negotiated us OUT of a war with North Korea back in the ’90s. A nuclear arms treaty that North Korea subsequently violated.
mclaren
@Hawes:
Are you drunk, brain-damaged, or just on hard drugs?
Source: “The Military-Industrial Candidate: Hillary Clinton prepares to launch the most formidable hawkish presidential campaign in a generation,” The American Conservative, 20 November 2014.
Source: “Hillary Clinton’s Illiberal Belligerence,” AntiWar.com, 14 December 2007.
mclaren
@alex:
By this demented logic, we must conclude that Ed Snowden was a paid North Korean agent. After all, no attempt at blackmail or extortion was made.
Get a clue, you halfwit. You can’t just use fact-free speculation to jump to a conclusion — you actually need something called “evidence.
Mnemosyne
@C.V Danes:
I can pretty much guarantee you that the CEO of Hasbro does not have the same insouciant attitude that you do about their designs for next Christmas’s Spider-Man toys being released a year early. And I’m pretty sure that AMC, Cinemark, and the other big theater chains are shitting themselves because pretty much every theater shows digital versions nowadays, not film reels, and if the hackers can get into AMC’s system thanks to Sony’s fuckups, AMC is screwed.
This is what you seem not to understand: Sony’s screwup is messing with the profits of other megacorporations downstream. The other megacorporations are not going to be happy about that, and Sony telling them, Hey, no one’s network is really secure! is going to make up for that lost revenue.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@C.V Danes:
I’m stepping away from this conversation now, because it’s starting to piss me off that you’re making broad statements that I know from personal experience are not accurate to this industry, but I also know that very few people actually give a shit about that aspect of the story and only care about the general tech questions, not the specifics. So, goodnight.
heckblazer
@mclaren: No one sane wants a war with North Korea. Aside from nukes they have enough conventional rockets and artillery to hit Seoul seriously hard without crossing the DMZ. This Foreign Policy article estimates that they could fire 500,000 rounds onto Seoul in the first hour of a conflict. Since neither Secretary Clinton nor President Obama is insane I’m quite sure that they are not angling for a war with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
mclaren
@heckblazer:
Which proves my point. This means that the Washington insiders all wants a war with North Korea.
Meanwhile the article Reaction to the Sony hack is `Beyond the realm of stupid'” says it all.
I vividly remember spending one evening in late 1994 watching with stupefied disbelief a rebroadcast of a MEET THE PRESS episode broadcast on 31 December 1964 in which all the assembled experts proclaimed with solemn self-assurance “There’s one thing we can be certain of: America will not go to war with Viet Nam in 1965.”
We now return you to the regularly scheduled self-delusion and epistemic closure formerly known as “the liberal Democratic party.”
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
This is beyond retarded even for you, Mnemosyne. Sony’s screwups have already messed with the profits of other megacorporations downstream. As, for instance, the epochal fuckup of Sony’s Blu-Ray copy protection system, which was cracked so badly, so colossally, so permanently, when the master key was released, that all hi-def movies instantly became rippable forever. Because if there’s one thing you can never ever ever ever take back and do over, it’s the master encryption key that generates all the other sub-keys used to encrypt Sony’s hi-def Blu-Ray movies.
The other megacorportations just rolled over and said “meh.” And that was a much much more important hack than this trivial incident.
So, no, Mnemosyne, you don’t have a ghost of a fucking clue, and now go away and stop lowering our IQs. Everyone who listens to you becomes dumber. Enough. Away with you.
heckblazer
@mclaren:
Ah, you mean the article that says:
mclaren
@heckblazer:
Time will tell.
I’ve been around long enough to see more stupidity and craziness in high places than most of you can even imagine. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “There are more crazy things going on in the heads of people in Washington, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
All hard copy media is a dying format. DVD and Blu-Ray sales are shrinking year over year, and have been since 2007, which you may note is three years before the Blu-Ray code was cracked.
So, no, having people crack Blu-Ray the same way they cracked DVDs and laserdiscs didn’t impact sales. The trendlines were already going down well before that happened, and every studio in town knew it.
But, please, continue to display your total ignorance of the economics of the entertainment business for everyone here. It amuses me.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@mclaren:
Not really Mclean, anyone with sense in their head would remember that even Bush passed on a chance for a war with N Korea. You do understand it’s the President that decides if the nation goes to war or not? As for “time will tell”, next month when this nonsense is forgotten and were talking about a yam shortage or something, you will deny you ever said something this stupid. Just like the pundits you effect to dislike so much.
=
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@mclaren:
I’d ask you the same thing since you’ve forgotten the House that authorizes the budget has been under GOP control for the last six years so clearly the GOP is happy with the reduced military spending.