Free Republic

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...

Brow you see them: Kim Jong-un sports bizarre shrunken eyebrows in 2015 speech PUBLISHED : Friday, 02 January, 2015, 9:15am UPDATED : Friday, 02 January, 2015, 1:47pm Alex Millson alex.millson@scmp.com When Kim Jong-un delivered his New Year message offering to participate in high-level talks with South Korea, the setting, his outfit and posture were all strikingly similar to those he adopted exactly two years earlier. Two things, however, appeared radically different - the North Korean leader’s eyebrows. In what appeared to be a case of severe over-plucking, Kim’s brows appeared to be significantly shorter than on earlier occasions, sitting above...

Sony Pictures is triumphant today because their release of the North Korea-inspired comedy The Interview by Seth Rogen and James Franco had an estimated sales of $15 million over the weekend from largely online sales. The movie was schedule to be released in about 3,000 theaters, but because of “terror” threats, it was released in a limited number of theaters and online.The revenue is about $5,000 per canceled theater, or about 300 people per theatre. Kind of light traffic for a new release with a great deal of publicity surrounding it. Count it another triumph however for a renegade state...

Christians say their faith has been singled out because authorities are trying to curb its growth. BEIJING — Two days before Christmas, members of a rural Christian congregation in the eastern city of Wenzhou welded some pieces of metal into a cross and hoisted it onto the top of their worship hall to replace one that was forcibly removed in October. Within an hour, township officials and uniformed men barged onto the church ground and tore down the cross. "They keep a very close watch on us, and there is nothing we can do," said a church official, who spoke...

Very quietly and under the radar, authorities in China have cracked down on Christmas celebrations in China, deeming them "Western spiritual pollution." As CNMNews reports, for several years, a virtual rush to convert to Christianity has been underway in China, both in its Protestant and Catholic versions. The Department of Education this year issued a directive to limit Christianity’s appeal to young people, banning Christmas events and celebrations in schools and kindergartens, deemed “kitsch” and “un-Chinese”. The crackdown has also been spreading to universities and colleges nationwide. The result is nowhere more evident than in Google's traffic in China...  As...

To some Chinese, The Interview is ‘the greatest film in history’ Published: 8:23 AM, December 27, 2014 BEIJING — Even before Americans began flocking to theaters on Christmas Eve to see The Interview — Sony Pictures’ comedy about a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plot to kill the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un — Chinese film fans by the thousands were downloading mostly pirated versions of the movie on domestic video-sharing websites. By midday yesterday (Dec 27), more than 300,000 people had seen the film, and the reviews, by and large, were favorable. “Perfect, the greatest film in history, all...

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...

North Korea is so isolated that rather than bring the Internet to its hackers, it brings them to it—in a swank hotel in China. The luxury hotel that has been called a command post for North Korean hackers would make for a unique holiday getaway and give you lots to talk about back home. “Surprisingly Great Hotel - Clean, Tasteful.... and North Korean!” says a trip advisor review for the Chilbosan Hotel in Shenyang, China. For just $53, you get “a deluxe twin room,” including a North Korean breakfast considerably more substantial than those enjoyed by the vast majority of...

Looking at the vast attention given to this Sony hack, I began to realize today that the media, egged on by Team Jarrett, is REALLY UPSET that a MOVIE was not going to be released. Compare this, though, to the NORKS efforts to build missiles and bombs that could annihilate millions of lives and leave cities radioactive for decades..... You can barely get the media to care.... Same goes for Iran. Let Iran's leader make an untoward remark about society or something.....the media talks. Iran building weapons to destroy Israel or sell to other terrorists to be used against America?...

David Martin December 19, 2014 How The Sony Hack Was Traced Back To North Korea The FBI statement was definitive: "The North Korean government is responsible" for the cyberattack on Sony. The attack was routed through servers in countries all over the world in an effort to hide its origin, but President Obama said North Korea is the sole culprit. "We've got no indication that North Korea was acting in conjunction with another country," Mr. Obama said Friday. The FBI cited some of its evidence tying the hack to North Korea: Internet addresses used by the North Korean government communicated...

Hunter Walker December 20, 2014A North Korean official said on Saturday that the secretive regime wants to mount a joint investigation with the United States to identify who was behind the cyber attack against Sony Pictures. An unnamed spokesman of the North Korean foreign ministry was quoted by the country's state news agency, KCNA, describing US claims they were behind the hack as "slander." "As the United States is spreading groundless allegations and slandering us, we propose a joint investigation with it into this incident," the official said, according to Agence France-Presse. After they began publishing leaked Sony movies, internal...

There's only one real way to compare military strength, and thankfully the world hasn't had many opportunities lately. Despite the potential powder keg in the South China Sea, standoffs in Ukraine, and proxy wars throughout the Middle East, inter-state warfare between the world's military powers has been all but banished from the global scene (for the time being, at least). For a simpler evaluation of military power, we turned to the Global Firepower Index, a ranking of 106 nations based on more than 50 factors including overall military budget, available manpower, and the amount of equipment each country has in...

“German researchers have discovered security flaws that could let hackers, spies and criminals listen to private phone calls and intercept text messages on a potentially massive scale – even when cellular networks are using the most advanced encryption now available,” Craig Timberg reports for The Washington Post. “The flaws, to be reported at a hacker conference in Hamburg this month, are the latest evidence of widespread insecurity on SS7, the global network that allows the world’s cellular carriers to route calls, texts and other services to each other,” Timberg reports. “Experts say it’s increasingly clear that SS7, first designed in...

Ladies and Gentlemen, as the new CEO of SONY Corporation, I am hereby announcing our strategy for the challenges presented by the North Korean hacking incident. I have: 1) Contacted via our representatives all our participating theaters, urging them to show "The Interview" at a special late night showing as the only film offered in that time slot. We don't want any innocent byestanders hurt and therefore all who attend will understand the risk they are taking. 2) Assembled our legal team to indemnify all said theater owners who screen the movie, both against physical/property loss and against lawsuits, should...

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...

A good match. One’s a far-left entity with poor English skills that maintains power by stoking grievances against America and the other’s North Korea.Here’s this week’s reminder that there’s no situation so terrible that Al Sharpton can’t make it worse. Hollywood ​came to the Rev. Al Thursday as embattled Sony exec Amy Pascal ​met ​privately with the ​black leader for 90 minutes ​in a bid to fix the fallout from the ​cyberhacking ​leak of embarrassing, racially charged emails.Pascal agreed to let Sharpton have a say in how Sony makes motion pictures, in an effort to combat what he called...

During his final 2014 press conference, President Barack Obama had some pretty stern words for Sony Pictures over their decision to pull The Interview in light of terror threats from North Korea-affiliated hackers. Amidst his remarks, though, came a notable flub that sent Twitter into a tizzy with joking responses. See transcript for the gaffe [emphasis added]: I think it says something interesting about North Korea that they decided to have the state come out with an all-out attack because of satirical movie starring Seth Rogen and James Flacco. I love Seth and I love James, but the notion that...

Did you know that having First Amendment rights in the United States comes with the responsibility not to offend dictators from North Korea? Had no idea? Me either. Last night on CNN "journalist" Sharon Waxman, who has worked at a number of media outlets including the Washington Post, argued that having First Amendment rights means we shouldn't be making fun of North Korean dictators because they might get upset. She was of course referring to the recent and massive hack on Sony pictures by North Korea as retaliation for "The Interview," a comedy about assassinating Kim Jong-Un. "I also want...

The Sony scandal may be about to take a giant turn. An FBI source tells RadarOnline.com exclusively that arrests “are imminent” in the case that has rocked the major entertainment company over the past few weeks. Radar can reveal that the FBI has been busy interviewing former Sony IT employees, and while the law enforcement agency believes that North Koreans are responsible for the hacking crimes, they must have had help from the inside. Whoever did this had to have either been an insider or someone who had been an insider,” explains the source. “They knew where to go and...

  TRIGGER WARNING* This has to be the best real estate deal since Whitewater.  Through a complex series of events that even our 24-hour news junkies have trouble following, Al Sharpton will now get to produce rap music in Cuba, while the U.S. sets up its embassy on the current site of North Korea’s diplomatic mission in Havana.  And Kim Jong Un will get to share a Cohiba cigar with Dennis Rodman, Al Sharpton, Amy Pascal and President Obama. It’s all in this one infographic.   Sony Pictures greenlights a film titled The Interview, a comedy which depicts the assassination...