mashable.com
Open in
urlscan Pro
2606:4700:4400::ac40:91ef
Public Scan
Submitted URL: http://mashable.com/2014/12/20/sony-hack-north-korea/?geo=AS&utm_cid=mash-prod-nav-geo%20%20%20https://mashable.com/...
Effective URL: https://mashable.com/archive/sony-hack-north-korea
Submission: On October 18 via manual from GB — Scanned from GB
Effective URL: https://mashable.com/archive/sony-hack-north-korea
Submission: On October 18 via manual from GB — Scanned from GB
Form analysis 1 forms found in the DOM
<form x-ref="subscribeForm" class="flex flex-row mt-8 h-12 border-b-2 md:mt-0 text-primary-400 border-primary-400 focus-within:text-secondary-300" data-initial-lists="top-stories" x-on:submit.prevent="submit()">
<input aria-describedby="emailSubscribeErrorContainer" x-ref="emailInput" type="email" x-model="email" class="py-2 px-4 w-4/6 text-base font-normal leading-5 placeholder-gray-600 text-gray-600 bg-white md:w-3/4" placeholder="Email Address"
aria-label="Email">
<input x-bind:value="selectedListsValue()" type="hidden" name="lists" value="top-stories">
<input type="hidden" name="source" value="site-footer">
<input type="hidden" name="courierList" value="Mashable On-Site - Top Stories Daily">
<button :disabled="isLoading" type="submit" class="py-2 px-1 w-2/6 font-bold leading-5 text-center bg-white md:w-1/4 subtitle-1">
<span x-show="isLoading" class="text-primary-400" style="display: none;">Loading...</span>
<span x-show="!isLoading" :class="{'text-red': isError}" class="text-sm">Subscribe</span>
</button>
</form>Text Content
Tech Science Life Social Good Entertainment Deals Shopping Games Search Cancel * Search Result -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tech Apps & Software Artificial Intelligence Cybersecurity Cryptocurrency Mobile Smart Home Social Media Tech Industry Transportation All Tech Science Space Climate Change Environment All Science Life Digital Culture Family & Parenting Health & Wellness Sex, Dating & Relationships Sleep Careers Mental Health All Life Social Good Activism Gender LGBTQ Racial Justice Sustainability Politics All Social Good Entertainment Games Movies Podcasts TV Shows Watch Guides All Entertainment SHOP THE BEST Laptops Budget Laptops Dating Apps Sexting Apps Hookup Apps VPNs Robot Vaccuums Robot Vaccum & Mop Headphones Speakers Kindles Gift Guides Mashable Choice Mashable Selects All Sex, Dating & Relationships All Laptops All Headphones All Robot Vacuums All VPN All Shopping Games Product Reviews Adult Friend Finder Bumble Premium Tinder Platinum Kindle Paperwhite PS5 vs PS5 Slim All Reviews All Shopping Deals Newsletters VIDEOS Mashable Shows All Videos SONY HACK FALLOUT: WHAT CAN THE U.S. DO AGAINST NORTH KOREA? By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai on December 20, 2014 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Flipboard North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, waves as North Korean military officers clap during a mass meeting of North Korea's ruling party at a stadium in Pyongyang, on April 14, 2012. Credit: Ng Han Guan What seemed an unlikely twist in a cheap Hollywood thriller is now reality: the U.S. government has publicly accused North Korea of hacking Sony. Uncle Sam's finger has been pointed, and President Barack Obama has made a promise to respond "proportionately" sometime in the future. Meanwhile, North Korea has denied any responsibility and even offered to help in a joint investigation. SEE ALSO: Why it's possible North Korea was behind the Sony hack But what can the U.S. actually do to retaliate or answer the cyberattack that led to the destruction of various Sony Pictures computers as well as the leak of around 200 gigabytes of internal data, which exposed salacious private emails, corporate secrets, as well as Sony's embarassing security practices? If there's one thing experts agree on, it's that the answer to that question is very complicated. "When it comes to North Korea, there are no good options," Jason Healey, a founding member of the Pentagon's first joint cyberwar unit and now director of the Atlantic Council's Statecraft Initiative, told Mashable. And it's not just about cybersecurity. It's about how to punish and deter what's pretty much a pariah state whom the U.S. has struggled to punish and deter for decades, "long before James Franco and Seth Rogen were in Freaks and Geeks," said Peter W. Singer, the author of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, and the strategist and senior fellow at New America foundation. With that in mind, here's what the Obama administration can do. By fetishizing 'attribution' for years, US ignored real issue: What do you actually do against China, Norks, Iran, Russia when you catch 'em— Jason Healey (@Jason_Healey) December 18, 2014 The cyber option The most predictable solution would be to strike back in the same realm where North Korea struck. But there are many problems with this. Firstly, the regime of Kim Jong-un, as Singer puts it, it's not "a highly wired kingdom." Its Internet infrastructure is very limited, and there just aren't that many targets you can actually hit, according to many experts. Moreover, Obama talked about a "proportional" response. What would that be in this case? North Korea hit a private company and exposed its internal secrets, it didn't hit the American military or its critical infrastructure, contrary to what Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign relations, suggested on Friday. how to respond to #NorthKorea: 1 idea: response in kind, ie, a cyber assault, that would target political, military pillars of the regime— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) December 19, 2014 "A response in kind would be releasing something embarrassing about them, like, oh, I don't know, a silly movie about their leader," Singer told Mashable, laughing. If the attack was still ongoing, Healey explained, then the U.S. could probably do something to stop it in cyberspace. But that's not the case here, the damage is done, and the hacking operation is complete. The options, thus, are very limited. And there's the added complication that the NSA might have a foothold inside North Korean networks for surveillance purposes. If the U.S. exploits that for a cyberattack, it risks exposing the NSA's reach, potentially preventing it from conducting further espionage activities, according to experts. But there's yet another possibility in cyberspace. Instead of going after North Korea, go after the black market that provided the hackers with the tools they used to hack Sony. The hackers used off-the-shelf malware to wipe Sony's computers, a cyberweapon they probably bought on the Internet black market. Go after these illicit cyber weapon bazaars, Singer argued, and you can stop some future attacks from happening. North Korean soldiers march during a mass military parade in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square to celebrate 100 years since the birth of North Korean founder, Kim Il Sung on April 15, 2012. Credit: Ng Han Guan The military option On Friday, President Obama was asked specifically if he would rule out a military response to the Sony hack, but he declined to answer. Despite his non-answer, we can probably rule out a strikeback in real life -- as that would hardly be a proportional response to North Korea's actions in cyberspace. (Remember, we're still talking about just a hack on a private corporation.) The economic options Increasing sanctions would be another obvious response. The problem is, the United States already has extensive economic sanctions against the regime, and a practically non-existent commercial relationship with it. Last year, U.S. exports to North Korea amounted to $21.9 million, a risible amount. (For comparison, U.S. exports to South Korea amounted to $37.2 billion.) Moreover, all the sanctions in the past few decades have hardly deterred the country from making defiant threats, or launching illegal nuclear tests. Why would that change now? For Joshua Stanton, a lawyer and blogger who has advised the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee on North Korea sanctions legislation, there are other options, though, such as blocking the financial assets of North Korean officials and the government itself. "The single biggest thing that we can do is to designate the country as a primary money-laundering concern," Stanton told The Wall Street Journal. That would push banks around the world to limit their transactions with the country. Students at the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, in Pyongyang, North Korea work on computers on April 18, 2013. Credit: AP Photo The legal option Earlier this year, after months of high-profile cyberattacks allegedly conducted by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, the U.S. charged five members of China's People Liberation Army with hacking and cyberspying -- an unprecedented step to deter China. If the FBI was able to identify the actual people behind the attack on Sony, it could do the same. The problem is, it's unclear whether the FBI has that much evidence even linking North Korea to the attack, let alone individual people. Plus, even if the FBI did know who they were, "it's not like you're going to get these individuals," Singer said. The U.S. would have to get North Korea or perhaps China (if the hackers were based there) to extradite them, which is an unlikely scenario. "They are not going to ever see a courtroom," Singer said. The diplomatic option As we've already pointed out, the U.S. and North Korea have almost non-existent diplomatic relations. But there is something the U.S. can do, as Healey explained in an article on Friday. The idea is to get China, a key ally of Kim Jong-un, to condemn the attacks publicly and push North Korea behind the scenes to put an end to these kinds of activities. China has some leverage with North Korea and could even stop them themselves, Healey said, since most North Korean hackers are believed to operate inside China's boundaries. Another option would be to get the United Nations to issue a resolution condemning this attack. But, according to Singer, this would hardly have any effect. Otherwise, the U.S. could designate North Korea as a nation sponsoring terrorism, another option that experts doubt will change much. A North Korean military officer uses a computer in an electronic library at the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, an elite military school for boys ages eleven to eighteen, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, on June 17, 2013. Credit: Alexander F. Yuan So what's gonna happen? At this point, it's too early to tell. Obama didn't want to commit to anything, but after his press conference, officials reportedly delivered a series of potential responses the president. Experts aren't too sure, however, that we're actually going to see any meaningful action. "Other than some type of 'shame on you North Korea' and 'we don't like you for doing this,'" Jeffrey Carr, a cybersecurity expert and CEO of Taia Global, told Mashable, "I frankly don't know what other options there are." Healey noted that the U.S. didn't go much farther than that after North Korea sunk a South Korean ship killing 46 sailors in 2010. At the time, the U.S., a military ally of South Korea, simply condemned the attack. "And that was for dead people," Healey said, adding that the U.S. can't afford to go too far in its response and risk provoking an "unstable" country. "Right now, all we've got is an attack on freedom of expression. So I don't see us being more muscular now than we had been." In Carr's view, a response from the U.S. may not even be necessary. "Respond to what?" he asked rhetorically. "Respond to the fact that a U.S. company got its network completely owned by hackers? That happens every day." (Note: Although Sony Pictures is based in the U.S., largely run by American staffers, it is a Japanese-owned company, whose headquarters are in Tokyo, Japan.) In fact, as Motherboard's Jason Koebler rightfully noted, the U.S. barely did anything in response to China's many hacks, including one in which the hackers stole sensitive U.S. military blueprints. Remember, China stole a goddamn stealth fighter from us & no one cared. http://t.co/KXcKY8cv7C pic.twitter.com/bf5KTojZ09— Jason Koebler (@jason_koebler) December 19, 2014 Further complicating any response, there's the elephant in the room of the NSA, an agency which, along with its British ally the GCHQ, has carried out dozens of hacking operations around the world, even against private companies like Huawei and the Belgian telecom provider Belgacom. How can the U.S. condemn another country for a similar action? What idiot government set the precedent that nation states can attack companies? Wait, no, don't answer that.— Jack Daniel (@jack_daniel) December 19, 2014 But in Healey's view, past precedents don't matter. He feels the attack deserves an answer. "We have no fucking moral standing to come out and really start talking about what you ought and ought not do," he said. "But you know what? We have to." The biggest stories of the day delivered to your inbox. Loading... Subscribe This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. Thanks for signing up. See you at your inbox! * TECH Cryptocurrency Social Media Artificial Intelligence Android Apple Cameras Microsoft TikTok Mobile Wifi/Routers TVs Speakers Desktops Laptops Headphones Tech Industry Antivirus VPN Productivity Creative Software Tablets Smart Home Transportation Gaming Consoles * SCIENCE Animals NASA Rocket Launches Climate Change Environment Space GAMES Daily Puzzles Word Card Arcade Casino Wordle Connections Strands SOCIAL GOOD DEALS How we Select Deals * ENTERTAINMENT True Crime Music Marvel DC Comics Disney Pixar Streaming HBO Hulu Peacock Movies TV Shows Podcasts LIFE Mental Health Family & Parenting Careers Sleep House & Home Health & Wellness Education Sex, Dating & Relationships Digital Culture * SHOP THE BEST Dating Apps Sexting Apps Hookup Apps VPNs Robot Vaccuums Robot Vaccum & Mop Headphones Speakers Kindles Gift Guides Mashable Choice Mashable Selects All Kitchen All Beauty All Robot Vacuums All Earbuds REVIEWS Adult Friend Finder Bumble Premium Tinder Platinum Kindle Paperwhite PS5 vs PS5 Slim * EVENTS Prime Day Black Friday Cyber Monday Samsung Galaxy Unpacked WWDC CES VIDEOS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * About Mashable * Contact Us * We're Hiring * Newsletters * Sitemap * * * * * * * * * ©2005–2024 Mashable, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All Rights Reserved. Mashable is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis and may not be used by third parties without express written permission. * About Ziff Davis * Privacy Policy * Terms of Use * Advertise * Accessibility * Do Not Sell My Personal Information * AdChoices * WE CARE ABOUT YOUR PRIVACY We and our 854 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device. Selecting "I Accept" enables tracking technologies to support the purposes shown under "we and our partners process data to provide," whereas selecting "Reject All" or withdrawing your consent will disable them. If trackers are disabled, some content and ads you see may not be as relevant to you. You can resurface this menu to change your choices or withdraw consent at any time by clicking the ["privacy preferences"] link on the bottom of the webpage [or the floating icon on the bottom-left of the webpage, if applicable]. Your choices will have effect within our Website. For more details, refer to our Privacy Policy.Our Privacy Policy WE AND OUR PARTNERS PROCESS DATA TO PROVIDE: Store and/or access information on a device. Personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development. List of Partners (vendors) Reject All I Accept Show Purposes