We've all heard about North Korea's infamous hack onto Sony Pictures Entertainment's servers and the accusation of them publishing private information. But now, there are reports that four years prior, the United States was cracking into North Korean computer networks and tracing the movement of its government hackers. Because of the information they had gathered then, the NSA was able to determine that North Korea was, in fact, the perpetrator. So what exactly did the US access? Supposedly agents from the National Security Agency broken into Chinese networks and connected North Korea to the World Wide Web. They then embedded malware into the networks used by cyberspies. Some of these cyberspies were from Bureau 121, which is the unit responsible for the US hack. After the incident, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that releasing one of Sony's films, The Interview, which comedically depicts a plot to kill him, an "act of war" and threatened a terrorist attack. Despite the drama, Sony Pictures released the film in select theaters and through YouTube.
This article was written by Jeremy Diamond of CNN News on Mon January 19, 2015 at 6:57 PM ET. I found this article very eye-opening. When I first heard the story about the North Korean hack into Sony Pictures, I wondered how the US came to the conclusion that they were the ones to blame. Now knowing that the United States had done their own hacking years ago, brings a little more light to the subject. In the end, I think that Sony Pictures had every right to go ahead and release the film, despite it being controversial. I think that it made a statement to Kim Jong Un that the US doesn't back down.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/politics/nsa-north-korea-hacking-2010/index.html
No comments:
Post a Comment