Posted on 12/27/2014 3:45:25 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Linguists identified foreign phrasing in about 2,000 words from hacker emails and posts that may have been penned by a Russian native speaker. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Linguists identified foreign phrasing in about 2,000 words from hacker emails and posts that may have been penned by a Russian native speaker.
What if it wasn’t North Korea after all?
In the controversy over the Sony hacking, government officials have accused the sequestered communist country of hacking Sony, but security analysts argue Russian hackers may be the culprit.
Writing samples from hackers claiming responsibility for leaking finance reports and emails by Sony employees suggest the native language was Russian, according to Taia Global, a cyber security consulting group.
“Our preliminary results show that Sony's attackers were most likely Russian, possibly but not likely Korean and definitely not Mandarin Chinese or German,” the Seattle-based company wrote in a Christmas Eve blog post.
Linguists analyzed about 1,600 words in strangely worded emails and posts by the “Guardians of Peace,” but the findings are not enough to conclude North Korea spawned the cyber attacks that started Nov. 24. EUO 3TP TPSOUT KOROUT KCNA/REUTERS Writing samples from the 'Guardians of Peace' hackers suggest a Russian speaker may be behind it all, but a Korean speaker is possible, too.
The emails are surprisingly plentiful, Taia Global president Jeffrey Carr, said.
“Normally hackers don’t leave so many texts,” Carr told the Daily News in a brief phone call.
Phrases such as “our agents find themselves act in necessary places” and “is called by the greed of Sony” were compared to four major languages to detect the writer’s native language.
The majority of the phrasing could have been translated word for word from Russian, Shlomo Argamon, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, learned. The Sony hack job led to a series of emails being leaked to the public starting Nov. 24 before threats of violence were made regarding the release of Sony's movie 'The Interview.' KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/REUTERS The Sony hack job led to a series of emails being leaked to the public starting Nov. 24 before threats of violence were made regarding the release of Sony's movie 'The Interview.'
“The author(s) were writing in English, knew English words, but were not proficient. They did not make their meaning clear,” Argamon told the Daily News.
Argamon is also a scientist at Taia Global, but has been researching text for the past eight years to detect the author’s native language and age.
His study concludes it's not impossible that the messages were written by a native Korean speaker, but it's unlikely.
Argamon’s study shows 15 out of 20 phrasings translated to English in the emails matched the Russian language. Nine matched Korean, but Mandarin and German is ruled out completely. DEC. 2 2014 FILE PHOTO Nick Ut/AP Despite the government’s announcement that North Korea is behind the Sony hacks, security analysts believe other forces such as Russian hackers may be at work.
The analysis is the same method used to show imprisoned UK killer Jamie Starbuck faked emails to his murdered wife’s family on her behalf for two years.
Though the findings do not completely rule North Korea out, it questions the US government's recent vow to avenge cyber attacks perpetrated within the country over Sony’s release of "The Interview".
Other theories detailed by the New York Times this week suggest any hacker could be responsible as long as they had an internet connection and basic hacking skills.
Malware programmed using a Korean language setting may have been a red herring as well.
Or simply, it was an inside job by a disgruntled Sony employee with sizeable knowledge on the company’s servers and passwords, the Times added.
Come on. It’s was Sony itself or the feds doing a trial run to pull the plug on the internet for US citizens.
It would be funny if kim jong uggggh and putin could take turns reading choice bits from the hacked emails.
oops. this was to you:
It would be funny if kim jong uggggh and putin could take turns reading choice bits from the hacked emails.
Clearly, Sony has a Putin movie in the works.
Good grief!! REALLY???? REALLY????
THANK YOU for proving my point!
But the FBI said is was the NORKs and the FBI works for H0lder who never makes a mistake.
You're counter argument is "REALLY???? REALLY????"
I was hoping for something with a little more meat on it. What is so ridiculous about North Korea hiring Hackers and people to get at somebody on the Inside?
Publicity stunts don't go bad, they just go stupid as the lies get worse covering previous lies. Just like the white house.
Big time!! If North Korea had the know-how to do this, they’d be doing it all over the place.
I’ve always wondered why people refuse to believe that it was disgruntled former and/or current employees of the Sony IT department.
Yeah, this also closely mirrors things I’ve said, namely: Nobody gave a crap when China hacked Lockheed and stole thousands of F-35 engineering drawings but the govt. is jacked-up to Red Alert that this happened to an entertainment company.
It may very well be an employee or a group of employees who did this with no outside influence. If so they were very foolish to think this wouldn't get traced back to them.
Why would such a group have a motive to do so much damage to Sony and attract the interest of the FBI and counter terrorism? Again, if they were not motivated by outside forces this was a very foolish thing for them to do.
Now one of the things I have long done for a living is repair electronic equipment. When I encounter a problem with a piece of equipment I consider the symptoms and then I ponder what component failures could cause such symptoms. I find that often there are many suspects that could produce the exact same symptoms so I find myself having to consider multiple plausible theories at the same time.
I have to devise tests to support or disprove the theories until I narrow it down to one theory which fits both the original observed symptoms and all my subsequent tests. Using this technique I eventually narrow it down to a single component failure.
My point here is that It is normal and natural for me to consider multiple possibilities until further information is forthcoming.
Yes, it *COULD* be North Korea using their human assets and money to make this happen. They had the best motive of anyone so far seen in this drama.
Yes, it *COULD* be disgruntled employees acting alone and with no connection with North Korea, though if this is a case, they badly overestimated their skills at getting away with it.
Yes, it *COULD* be a third party of which we are currently unaware.
Again, I'm perfectly content with juggling multiple theories and weighing probabilities until more facts come forward to narrow down the options. This is how I have been solving problems for quite a long time.
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