Four years ago the world was shocked by the hacking of one of the largest film studios
in the world.
As a subsidiary of Sony international, Sony Pictures finances and distributes films around
the world, and with a potentially very offensive movie to the Kim Jong Un regime nearing release,
it's no surprise that when hacked, North Korea was the first to be blamed.
But what really happened and who is to blame?
On November 24th, 2014 there are just weeks before the release of the Seth Rogen and James
Franco comedy, The Interview.
Financed and developed by Sony, the film is a fictionalized attempt on Kim Jong Un's life,
and portrays the dear leader as an unstable and slightly baffoonish maniac.
The project was always considered potentially sensitive, and prior to Sony's greenlight
had been passed on by other studios- fear of a possible North Korean reprisal hung around
the project, and given North Korea's previous abductions of famous Japanese filmmakers and
international assassinations, they weren't completely unfounded.
Yet surprisingly it's Sony pictures- a Japanese owned company, and one of North Korea's most
hated international rivals- who greenlighted the film and helped develop it.
That morning Sony employees showed up to work much like normal only to find themselves locked
out of their computer network by a screen filled with a glowing red skeleton and the
following message: Hacked by #GOP.
The screen cryptically stated Sony had already been warned, and that “this is just the
beginning.”
The hackers also claimed to have obtained all their internal data including “your
secrets and top secrets”, then a final warning that if they don't obey, they'll release the
data to the world.
A deadline offered by the hackers- 11:00 pm that same day- was ignored, which led directly
to a massive dump of internal documents, unreleased films, and very embarrassing emails.
Of the emails, racist exchanges between two of Sony's top producers were the most embarrassing
which led to public apologies.
The finger was almost immediately pointed at North Korea, and for obvious reasons, with
the FBI suspecting North Korea pretty early into the investigation.
But where they really to blame?
Nobody knows exactly how long the perpetrators spent hacking Sony, but per US investigators
the culprits spent at least two months eavesdropping on Sony and copying critical files from their
network.
Later in the investigation, one of the hackers involved claimed that they had had access
for at least a year prior to the November 2014 ultimatum- an impressive amount of time
for Sony to have had no clue their security had been completely defeated.
The hackers would go on to claim that over 100 terabytes of data had been copied in the
attack, but the claim was never confirmed.
The attack was executed using a Server Message Block Worm Tool- a form of malware- and included
a listening implant to eavesdrop on Sony's most sensitive communications, a backdoor,
proxy tool, destructive hard drive tool, and destructive target cleaning tool.
The FBI said that the components involved clearly suggested an intent to gain entry
repeatedly, extract information, have the option to be destructive, and remove evidence
of the attack itself.
Other than a great deal of stolen emails, documents, and unreleased films, it's not
known if the perpetrators actually destroyed any content within the network, but given
the multiple redundancy taken with film scripts and final edits of films, the act would have
been largely pointless anyways.
Unknown to the public, Sony Pictures executives had actually received an email the previous
Friday from a group called “God'sApstls”, demanding monetary compensation or “Sony
Pictures will be bombarded as a whole”.
The email had been pretty much ignored by everyone at Sony, with most completely missing
it in the massive amount of daily emails, or discarding it as junk mail.
Note to any would be hackers: learn from thousands of struggling screenwriters and don't email
your ultimatums-or scripts- to producers who's inboxes fill with thousands of emails daily,
it will literally never get opened by the slave, we mean intern, tasked with pouring
over each one for anything important.
With their deadline ignored, the Guardians of Peace began leaking unreleased films online,
which would go on to hurt Sony in the box office.
They also began to leak other data, to include the stolen emails, in order to gain attention
from social media sites and news outlets- yet didn't specify what they wanted in return.
Sony immediately put its top IT professionals on the job and wisely contacted the FBI and
private security firm FireEye to help protect Sony employees who's personal data had been
exposed, repair their digital infrastructure, and find the source of the leak.
Four days later though a public report was already blaming North Korea for the hack.
On December 8th, 2014 another major dump of information was dumped by the GOP, along with
language threatening Sony relating to the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Big mistake.
The terror-like threats immediately garnered the attention of US security agencies, and
what had been initially considered a nearly inconsequential criminal matter, suddenly
became a national security concern.
With the US intelligence agency turning its attention against the Guardians of Peace,
nobody was surprised when North Korea was quickly being identified as the perpetrator.
Most mysterious of all however was North Korea's complete loss of access to the internet for
several days during early 2015, a feat which surely only the most powerful cybersecurity
agencies in the world- Russia, US, or China- could have managed, and possibly a 'shot across
the bow' warning to the rogue state.
Debate about North Korea's culpability continued though, with even Seth Rogen saying in 2017
that he wasn't sure it really had been North Korea.
Yet the timing of the attack- just weeks before the release of The Interview- didn't seem
like a coincidence.
There's also the fact that North Korea had petitioned the UN to block the release of
the film, stating that a film portraying the assassination of a head of state was improper
and dangerous to peace and stability.
We guess that if you live in a nation where your head of state is a maniac who starves
his own people and throws them in gulags, such a film may indeed be dangerous to peace
and stability.
The UN naturally disregarded North Korea's request and reminded the hermit kingdom that
that's not how freedom works.
There was also the specific threat made against The Interview, followed by warnings such as
“how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to” if people went to see
the film.
The threat said “the world will be full of fear, remember the 11th of September 2001.”
It warned people to stay away from movie theaters showing the film and that if anybody lived
near a theater they should leave their house.
Yet doubts about North Korea's culpability continued, with many saying that it had been
an inside job done by one of six disgruntled former employees who had both the motivation
and know-how to execute such an attack.
But just this September the US Department of Justice at last laid out sweeping evidence
showing that North Korea had indeed been behind the attack, and specifically naming one individual:
Park Jin Hyok, highlighting his attacks against Sony, the WannaCry attack, and a major theft
from a bank in Bangladesh.
Ultimately its clear that North Korea was behind the Sony pictures hack, but what's
even more clear is that you really, really should not threaten terrorist action against
the US.
Had the hackers left September 11th well enough alone, the hack would have been considered
a fairly routine criminal matter and we might never know- but due to the terrorist threats,
the US not only discovered the source of the attack, but somehow managed to track down
at least one specific individual.
One individual that has to live in fear of extradition for the rest of his life if he
ever steps out of North Korea again.
What do you think about the Sony Pictures hack?
Was it really North Korea, or are they just a convenient scapegoat?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, make sure you check our other video: 50 Insane Facts About North Korea You Didn't
Know!
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