WATCH ABOVE: U.S. officials are treating the Sony hack as a national security matter which will require a proportionate response. Omar Villafranca reports
TORONTO – As the fallout continues from a near months-long cyber-siege on Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., U.S. federal investigators are reportedly set to announce they have connected the attacks to North Korea — but, is the communist country a lone suspect?
Sony Pictures announced its decision to cancel the Christmas Day release of The Interview, a comedy based on the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, after almost a month of data hacks and terror threats against the company, and more specifically, the film itself.
On Nov. 24, Sony Pictures’ corporate network was attacked by hacker group Guardians of Peace (GOP), which then leaked Sony’s internal data, including account passwords, employee details and social insurance numbers.
Over the course of three weeks, the hacker group released gigabytes of Sony data until a “request was met” by the company.
In the early stages, it was widely speculated the hacks were in retaliation to the upcoming (and now-delayed) release of the Seth Rogen film.
Is North Korea behind the attacks, or a hacker group? Both? Someone else? Let’s look at some of the possible suspects.
North Korea
The U.S. is reportedly set to finger North Korea as the culprit behind the attacks. The communist nation has denied any involvement in the attack.
As Sky News correspondent Tom Cheshire points out, when GOP initially hacked Sony, the attackers made no mention of The Interview, the group just leaked bytes and bytes of info.
Cheshire says the mainstream media was the first to draw a connection.
However, in early June, North Korea already caught wind of the film, and the country’s foreign ministry called the movie “the most undisguised terrorism and a war action.”
“If the U.S. administration connives at and patronizes the screening of the film, it will invite a strong and merciless countermeasure,” a spokesperson said.
Inside job
Some of the brass at Sony Pictures are reportedly convinced the cyber-attack was an inside job, or at least a former employee is behind the hacking.
Earlier this month, a Sony Pictures spokeswoman told Agence France-Presse the company was internally investigating and the hack could be the result of a “talented” former employee.
Tommy Stiansen, the chief technology officer of a hacker-tracker company, told Bloomberg News there’s evidence the attack came from an Internet Protocol (IP) address tied to a former Sony employee in Japan.
“I am convinced that this is an inside job. The group, Guardians of Peace, nobody has never heard of them,” Stiansen said early this month. “I cannot find a drop of information on them. I would say if we can’t find anything on them, they don’t exist and they’re certainly not tied to any particular government.”
Hacking group
This isn’t the first time Sony has been hacked. The company, along with other entertainment distributors, has long since been fighting against illegal online file-sharing.
In 2011, Sony was attacked by “hacktivist” group Anonymous, in retaliation to the closures of filesharing websites such as of BitTorrent and Megaupload. Warner and Universal Music were also attacked.
In May 2011, Sony Pictures’ database was breached by a member of the hacker group LulzSec. The hacker stole personal data including the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of tens of thousands of Sony customers and distributed it online.
–with a file from Nicole Bogart and John R. Kennedy
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