Was North Korea Behind Sony’s Cyber Attack? | Cyberwar

Sony Pictures was hacked and the U.S. blamed North Korea. But the government's evidence wasn't all that convincing, and many hackers and computer experts still have doubts.

This episode of Cyberwar first aired on VICE TV in 2016.

In memoriam: Daniel Kaminsky (February 7, 1979 – April 23, 2021)

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#VICENews #News #hacker

[blutobeyond]

This had a more far-reaching impact than just Sony Pictures. I lost my job at Sony Electronics in 2014 due to the financial fallout of this hack on the company as a whole. Certain Marketing departments were shut down, the NYC headquarters/flagship store was sold and moved to a smaller building, and the VAIO laptop business was sold off. Whether North Korea was 100% responsible or not, major corporations need to have better cyber security measures in place now more than ever.

[JossyFoop]

PSN being down for a month unlocked soooo many memories

[williambrasky]

“Nerd war” (and the disdain w/ which she delivered it) was the perfect note to end it on. You were starting to give ppl the idea that security researchers are cool.

[weaponizedcuriousity]

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?

[Sjalabais]

"This isn't a hack that requires nation state intent, it's a hack that requires a couple of guys being bored", said Dan Kaminsky, beautifully summarising the core message here.

[TooMuch]

Vice playing “just the tip” with these good videos once every quarter.

[sidflores]

A lot of this makes sense, but there are some things that I don’t agree with. Such as at 12:57, when the guy says he doesn’t see a reason why North Korea would try and extort money; it is well known and documented that the DPRK actively steals money from various countries, due to the large amount of sanctions imposed on the country. This is one of the biggest reasons the DPRK to invests so much into its cyber capabilities. It’s been estimated the DPRK stole 600 million worth of Crypto in 2023 alone; if they were already infiltrating Sony’s networks to cause damage, why wouldn’t they attempt to extort them while they were at it? Another thing I'm kind of skeptical of is the statement at 20:00. The idea of routing internet traffic through North Korea, especially at that time seems a bit far-fetched to me. The majority of DPRK’s computers are connected to their own private network or Intranet, not to be mistaken with the internet. It is said that at this time there were only a few thousand computers in North Korea that were connected to the internet, and all of these computers were operated by high-ranking officials. I find it hard to believe typical hacker bros were able to find one or multiple of these computers, penetrate them, and conceal their presence, while simultaneously extracting data from Sony through these networks, for the amount of time needed to obtain the amount of data they were able to steal. If the DPRK didn't do it, I feel it is still most likely a nation-state that carried out the attack. I'm not an expert by any means, so if there is any information I could be overlooking or misinterpreting please let me know.

[taylorfrink]

this was so interesting, i agree with the other comments saying a full length in depth doc on this subject would be very very cool to watch

[AceAzrael]

The woman at the end had me rolling when she called it a Nerd war she's not even lying😂

[ElDuderinoh]

4:07 confirmed: Angelina Jolie is a hacker for North Korea.

[tychodragon]

probably was some 13 year old in their parents basement angry he cant play Grand Theft Auto

[emilymschoener]

This was so far beyond Sony employees. My emails me were in there, too. I worked closely with Sony a lot but never had an SPE email

[vani_maki]

We need more cyber security investigations/stories!

[elpidalastname]

Big companies exploiting and murdering millions of people per day:😴
Random hackers making a company suffer for 2 seconds: 😵🤬😡😤😤

[BangBangBang.]

Oh man the movie leaks about this time were so high quality

[c.s.]

R.I.P Dan Kaminsky, dude was a legend

[akaRickAdams]

Is it me, or do Geohot and Quentin Tarantino have similar speaking styles/rhythms...?

[BangBangBang.]

A perfect example of gutting the IT department and the results you receive

[michaelhodges]

Brooo I've been waiting for you to come back and continue the 'Hacked' videos

[Trogramming]

18:50(ish)
Suggesting a commonly misspelling of a variable name implies the same threat actor is silly.
Open source software is regularly forked and tweaked, or simply downloaded and run without modification.

Software has infinite breadth and depth and no-one can understand all the software on which they depend.
Hackers strive to know as many levels as they can however you won't find a single hacker out there who doesn't occasionally rely on blackbox abstractions (understanding things in terms of what they do, as opposed to how they do it)

In fact Id go as far as to say that no-one who uploaded or remote-file-inclusion'ed a php shell to breach a server knew how the software worked, they only knew what it did (and even then, not all of it)
This is evident by the fact that it took 9 years for the password bypassing backdoor to be discovered in the c99 shell (assuming the "beta (2005" line can be believed.

The wordpress plugin "OWM Weather" accidentally released a version that said OPM instead of OWN, if two people have this software version in common are they both working for the same puppeteer?