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WASHINGTON — The trail that led American officials to blame North Korea for the destructive cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in November winds back to 2010, when the National Security Agency scrambled to break into the computer systems of a country considered one of the most impenetrable targets on earth. Spurred by growing concern about North Korea’s maturing capabilities, the American spy agency drilled into the Chinese networks that connect North Korea to the outside world, picked through connections in Malaysia favored by North Korean hackers and penetrated directly into the North with the help of South Korea and other...

BEIJING — North Korea on Sunday denounced new economic sanctions imposed by President Barack Obama in response to a cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment that U.S. officials have blamed on the regime. The country's official news agency quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the new sanctions would only "harden its will and resolution to defend ... the dignity of the nation." The new penalties —which cut off access to the U.S. financial sector for 10 individuals and three government entities identified as key operatives engaged in hostile behavior, including the country's intelligence agency — add to sanctions imposed...

Gotcha? 01.02.15 U.S. Spies Say They Tracked ‘Sony Hackers’ For Years American spies have detailed dossiers on the North Koreans who the U.S. says were behind the Sony attack. But the still-secret evidence likely won’t convince skeptics. The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies for years have been tracking the hackers who they believe to be behind the cyber attack on Sony, according to current and former American officials. And during that long pursuit, U.S. agencies accumulated still-classified information that helps tie the hackers to the recent Sony intrusion. The Obama administration announced a round of sanctions against North Korea Friday,...

Cybersecurity experts have given a detailed outline to the FBI about the hack attack against Sony Pictures, insisting it was not the work of North Korea but a group of current and former employees who shared a 'mutual hatred' for the company. While the FBI and Sony have announced they believe Pyongyang carried out the hack - claims that were denied by leader Kim Jong-un - independent security officials have been coming forward for the past week saying most of the evidence points to an inside job. Silicon Valley security firm Norse, which provides intelligence to companies to prevent their...

January 02, 2015 FoxNews.comThe Obama administration on Friday imposed a wave of sanctions against members of the North Korean government, amounting to the U.S. government's first official response to the cyber-attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment. Despite lingering questions from private security analysts over whether North Korea was responsible for the hack -- as the FBI has alleged -- the White House described the new sanctions as retaliation against Pyongyang. "We take seriously North Korea's attack that aimed to create destructive financial effects on a U.S. company and to threaten artists and other individuals with the goal of restricting their right...

30 December 2014 Last updated at 11:33 Sony hackers 'shared' stolen employee login data Data that helped hackers access Sony's internal network came from another group targeting the firm's gaming network, reports the Washington Post. In an interview, a self-proclaimed Lizard Squad member said it had given stolen data to the Guardians of Peace. The GoP has carried out several attacks on Sony in a bid to halt the release of comedy film The Interview. By contrast, the Lizard Squad targeted Sony's PlayStation network knocking it offline on Christmas Day. The man interviewed by the newspaper appears to one of...

The North Korean Internet has gone dark.  Meanwhile the United States has demanded that Korea pay compensation to Sony for the damage they have caused.First of all, Congratulations to the Obama administration.  After bumbling on this issue for more than a week, it seems they may have got up enough gumption to slam the North Koreans.Even more importantly, the sordid threats to destroy the White House, Pentagon and other American institutions, perhaps with suicide attacks –all of this coming from North Korea and its inexperienced leader– are dangerous threats. Hitting back sends a message that statements of this kind are...

The FBI and the President may claim that the Hermit Kingdom is to blame for the most high-profile network breach in forever. But almost all signs point in another direction. So, “The Interview” is to be released after all. The news that the satirical movie—which revolves around a plot to murder Kim Jong-Un—will have a Christmas Day release as planned, will prompt renewed scrutiny of whether, as the US authorities have officially claimed, the cyber attack on Sony really was the work of an elite group of North Korean government hackers. All the evidence leads me to believe that the...

he FBI last week announced that they had discovered conclusive evidence proving the North Korean government was behind the Sony hack President Obama then attacked the country for their behavior during a news conference, and informed them that the United States would retaliate Now, the findings of the FBI are being called into question by many of the cybersecurity industry's leading experts What's more, after an independent investigation, Norse has determined that they believe a woman named 'Lena' is responsible for the hack Almost every expert stated that they believe the hack had to have been an inside job

Gotnews.com can confirm that North Korea was not behind the Sony hack contrary to major media reports. An investigation into the data shows that someone copied the released 200GB of data over 5-6 hours on the night of November 21st.

I am deeply skeptical of the FBI’s announcement on Friday that North Korea was behind last month’s Sony hack. The agency’s evidence is tenuous, and I have a hard time believing it. But I also have trouble believing that the U.S. government would make the accusation this formally if officials didn’t believe it. Clues in the hackers’ attack code seem to point in all directions at once. The FBI points to reused code from previous attacks associated with North Korea, as well as similarities in the networks used to launch the attacks. Korean language in the code also suggests a...

The United States urged North Korea on Monday to admit it ordered a cyberattack on the Hollywood studio Sony Pictures and to pay for the damage it had caused. "If they want to help here they could admit their culpability and compensate Sony for the damages that they caused," deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters. Washington accuses Pyongyang of being behind the hack that led to the release of embarrassing company emails and caused Sony executives to halt the debut of the comedy action film "The Interview."

The North Korean victory in getting Sony Pictures to pull its satirical film The Interview is a game-changing event to which free nations must respond. Adding cyber terrorism to the list of weapons that rogue nations can deploy means that both nations and private groups can be blackmailed by potentially anyone over anything. The U.S. government is debating its response. But in the meantime, private citizens can take action, and in ways even governments can’t or won’t. Advertisement Consider what the New York–based Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is doing to help counter the secrecy and restrictions on information that North...

North Korea has warned of strikes against key sites in the US in retaliation for Washington blaming Pyongyang for the recent Sony cyber attack, saying any US punishment over the incident would lead to damage “thousands of times greater”. Late on Sunday North Korea’s National Defence Commission said President Barack Obama was “recklessly” spreading rumours that Pyongyang was behind the cyber attack. Sony has pulled The Interview , a satirical film depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, after the hacking and subsequent threats of terrorist attacks against cinemas that screened it. The NDC said its 1.2m-member...

Outgoing CNN host Candy Crowley sat down with President Barack Obama for his final interview of the year on Friday in which she probed him over his government’s response to the North Korea-linked cyber-attack on Sony Studios. Crowley asked if the administration considered the costly and dramatic attack on the livelihoods of American citizens, complete with ultimatums warning of future attacks unless Sony behaved in a manner preferred by the attackers, represented an act of war. “No, I don’t think it was an act of war,” Obama said. “I think it was an act of cyber-vandalism that was very costly,...

tting North Korea back on its list of terrorism sponsors, after the hacking of Sony Pictures, reports the BBC. Speaking on CNN, Obama said a decision on the issue would be taken after a review, though he stressed that the attack was considered “an act of cyber-vandalism, not of war.” He said officials in Washington would examine all the evidence to determine whether North Korea should be put back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. "I'll wait to review what the finding are," Obama said, adding that he did not think the attack "was an act of war"....

Obama: North Korea Sony Hack ‘Not An Act of War’ 21 December 2014 The US is reviewing whether to put North Korea back onto its list of state sponsors of terrorism, President Barack Obama said in a wide-ranging interview recorded on Friday and broadcast on Sunday, as he decides how to respond to the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures that has been blamed on the communist nation. Speaking to CNN, Obama described the Sony hacking case as a “very costly, very expensive” example of cybervandalism, but did not call it an act of war. In trying to fashion a proportionate response,...

Friday, during his end of the year news conference, President Obama admonished Sony Pictures for cancelling its Christmas Day release of “The Interview.” He went on to say that if the company had called him, he would have told them to stick by the movie. Sony responded later that same day saying they did in fact reach out to the White House:

Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton appeared on CNN Friday afternoon to address the company's decision to pull "The Interview" from theaters.Lynton told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that Sony did not cave to the hacker group Guardians of Peace (GOP) by pulling the movie.A clip of the interview ran Friday afternoon on CNN. The full interview will air Friday night on Anderson Cooper 360.He said the decision to pull "The Interview" only came after the major theater chains decided not to show the film. It wasn't because Sony didn't want to distribute the movie."Movie theaters came to us … one by one...

George Clooney: Kim Jong-un can’t tell me what to watch By Derrick Bryson Taylor George Clooney won’t be told what to watch, especially by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “Sony didn’t pull [The Interview] because they were scared,” the 53-year-old actor told Deadline. “They pulled the movie because of all the theaters said they were not going to run it. And they said they were not going to run it because they talked to their lawyers and those lawyers said, if somebody dies in one of these, then you’re going to be responsible.” Clooney also shared that he had been...