SONY HACKED: NORTH KOREA BLAMED: NORTH KOREA SUFFERED INTERNET OUTAGE
The bottom line reality is that no system is hack proof. The smarter the security the smarter the hackers attracted to break in. The nature of the duality of this universe is that good and evil are for the most part evenly matched from top to bottom in every aspect of this place.
Programming and the internet has grown so fast that the number of holes in all systems are infinite. Impossilbe to seal up. And even if you were able to build a self contained unit, the technology exists to read it without a hardwire connect. And if that is not possible there are always sabateurs and traitors and hired outlaws to simply open all those perfectly crafted gates.
The real problem here is that it is possible to break the back of a large corporation like Sony. To hack and destroy, "burn", enough of the structure that it completely breaks down. And those who are determined will "hack and burn" the backups as well. It can be replaced always, but time is the enemy. Shut down a company like Sony for a quarter and the shareholders bail out. Faith is destroyed and money is moved with a quick sale of stock. But not so fast with lenders. They can't run, only salvage what they can.
In some ways this is good in that policies that harm and cheat on a grand scale within the world human society can be harmed in return. Therefore, on some level, the hacking acts as a deterrent to plotting board members. Sociopathic predator corporations can be terminated. Yet that will reduce investment and stop growth within the global economy.
What is to be acknowledged here? We all live in glass houses in this Brave New World. No one is safe. No one is above the written law or the law of nature.
And if in the worst case Armegaddon comes, all the animals will be gone, all the fish, and the climate change will flood the coastlines and weather patterns willl have desolated the green earth, and corporations will have made a world dependent on genetically seed that will no longer grow.
Always some will survive because there are so many humans spread out all over the world.
We are all one. We are from the same earth and heaven. And in our oneness we are fragile, naked and vulnerable, each and every one, biological, corporate and even AI when it fully appears.
WorldPeace or Armageddon. In time, though, all bodies die but AI can live almost forever.
There was a response to North Korea who has not been proven to have initiated the attack. There are a lot of players in the global village and a lot of motives. It is possible that some third party knew an attacked would reflect on North Korea. It is possible that the U S said it was North Korea to see if the Chinese would do something to get their attention like cutting off their internet, which happens.
The world is way to complicated now for easy answers. No room for wars based on misinformation like in Iraq where the CIA said they had an Al Quaeda connection and weapons of mass destruction. We trusted a president who gave us false information and a lot of Americans died (one is too many due to a senseless war) and millions of Iraqis were negatively affected and still live in chaos with ISIS controlling a lot of that country. If Saddam was still in power, ISIS would not be. That is the reality.
The world is a dangerous place and the internet is subject to all kinds of manipulations.
COMMENTARY BY DR JOHN WORLDPEACE FOR PRESIDENT 2016
SAN FRANCISCO — The ongoing cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment that began two weeks ago could portend a new era in computer assaults — one of wanton destruction and the release of embarrassing and potentially devastating data to the world.
"This is a game-changer for us in the United States, this level of maliciousness is unprecedented. I've never seen it, ever," said Jim Penrose, a former National Security Agency computer security expert now with Darktrace, a British security firm.
Sony is just the latest, and perhaps the hardest hit, in a long list of major U.S. corporations assaulted by cybercriminals in the past year. They include Target, P.F. Chang's, The Home Depot, Goodwill, Dairy Queen, JPMorgan Chase and the U.S. Postal Service.
Despite corporations spending millions of dollars on network security and the rise of hundreds of computer security firms, the attackers keep getting through.
The cost to investigate, notify and respond to these attacks is devastating. The average cost to a breached company was $3.5 million in 2014, according to a study released this year by the Ponemon Institute, which conducts independent research on information security.
Companies then pass on those increased costs for computer security, notification and, in some cases, remediation to their customers, even if those consumers don't even realize they're being affected.
A staggering 43% of companies worldwide have reported being breached in the past year, according to the Ponemon Institute. In addition, people whose credit cards or identities are compromised must also deal with replacement hassles and possible identity theft.
43% of companies had a data breach in the past year
But the Sony hack takes cyberattacks to a new, alarming level. In fact, nothing like it has been seen since the so-called Wild West days of the 1990s, when teenage hackers sometimes destroyed systems just to show they could.
But in the '90s, when the Internet was tiny and had almost no commercial interest, "nobody even noticed," said Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer for Trend Micro, a security software firm.
That is clearly no longer the case.
Today, Sony Pictures Entertainment has sales of $8 billion. A subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corp., SPE's global operations includes the production of movies, TV shows and digital content. Its biggest franchise is Spider-Man and it is home to stars such as Seth Rogen, George Clooney and Adam Sandler.
"This is totally different, this is literally the equivalent of burning the building down — it's a wake-up call about how bad it can get," said Kellermann.
The Sony attackers, who call themselves the "Guardians of Peace" or the "GOP," continue to taunt the company whose computer network they brought down on Nov. 24. On Friday, a threatening e-mail was sent to employees warning that what had come before "is only a small part of our further plan."
In somewhat mangled English, Friday's e-mail told employees to "make your company behave wisely." If they did not, "not only you but your family will be in danger."
Sony hit again, employee families threatened, files released
The e-mail caused Sony to tell its employees to stay off e-mail and go home.
Nothing is known about who the GOP are, what country they are from or what they want. Their messages would indicate they have some gripe with Sony and are making some demands on the company. But what those are isn't publicly known.
There has been speculation that they might be from North Korea, the attack in response to anger in that secretive dictatorship over an upcoming Sony comedy, The Interview, which stars Seth Rogen and makes fun of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea has denied any part in the hack.
North Korea says it didn't hack Sony
Regardless, the attack is a marked shift from what corporate America has become accustomed to.
Up until now, there have been four main types of attacks on companies. The most common are cybercriminals who steal credit card numbers, identification and other personal data and sell it on underground websites. The Target, Home Depot and JPMorgan attacks were all in this vein.
Often companies don't know their networks have been breached until credit card numbers used in their stores appear for sale on underground criminal sites. The response has been to beef up internal security while offering customers identity theft protection and new credit cards — at a cost of millions of dollars and the loss of customer confidence.
Data breach takes toll on Target profit
Less common, but not unknown, are attacks by so-called hacktivists. They typically deface or take down the website of a group they want to call out. For example, activists recently knocked the website of the Ku Klux Klan offline and published the names of individuals they claimed were members.
KKK hit by cyberattack after Ferguson threats
Rarely reported, although widely discussed in security circles, are industrial espionage attacks that steal companies' intellectual property, plans and customer lists. In Sony's case, it appears that the attackers are putting all of the files they've stolen on publicly available websites, not keeping the data for future use.
"Whoever's really behind it is doing it to do harm to Sony and to be punitive to the people who work for Sony," Penrose said.
The least common of all, but most terrifying, are attacks by governments aimed at other countries. As far as is known, these type of hacks are rare.
The first well-documented case of such an attack was the Stuxnet computer worm in 2010. It was deployed specifically to attack the computers that ran Iran's secret uranium enrichment program. It is believed to have been launched by Israel with help from the United States.
Iran media report new cyberattack by Stuxnet worm
As far as is publicly known, the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment is different from all of these.
Iran media report new cyberattack by Stuxnet worm
"These guys didn't make any demands, they didn't want money. They just wanted to watch the world burn," said Tom Chapman, a former Navy intelligence officer who is now director of operations at computer security firm EdgeWave in San Diego.
The attackers first crippled and erased the hard drives on Sony computers and destroyed its network infrastructure. Even two weeks in, employees are being told not to open their laptops, out of fear of erasing data.
"The destruction is a brand-new level of assault that companies haven't had to deal with before," Chapman said.
Executives at the cyber security firm Sony has brought in to investigate the attack, Mandiant, said much the same thing in an email obtained by USA TODAY.
The message, sent Sunday to Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, was from Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia. In it, he said "the scope of this attack differs from any we have responded to in the past, as its purpose was to both destroy property and release confidential information to the public."
Part of that release has been the posting of five Sony films on illegal sharing sites. They include the forthcoming Annie, Still Alice, Mr. Turner and To Write Love on Her Arms, as well as Fury, which is already in theaters.
Despite all this, publicity efforts continue largely uninterrupted for Annie and The Interview. The Annie junket is complete and the premiere is in NYC Sunday. The Interview will hold its premiere in Los Angeles this Thursday.
Though employees have been shaken, "the general sentiment is a strong resolve to get through this and not let them get to us," says a Sony source unauthorized to speak publicly about the situation.
Even so, Friday's message from the GOP to Sony is chilling to the rest of corporate America. Everyone has something damaging, dangerous or simply embarrassing enough to bring down an executive, a division or an entire company.
The GOP's Friday file dump ended with this line: "The data to be released next week will excite you more."
If 2014 was the year of the breach, 2015 could be the year of obliteration
Internet Outage in North Korea, Network Researcher Says
By Jordan Robertson Dec 22, 2014 11:44 AM MT
Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- “The Coming Collapse of China” Author Gordon Chang discusses why he thinks the hack attacks on Sony originated in China. Chang speaks on “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg)
North Korea’s access to the Internet has been hit with outages and is offline today, according to a network-monitoring company, days after the U.S. government accused the country of hacking into Sony Corp. (6758)’s files.
North Korea, which has four official networks connecting the country to the Internet -- all of which route through China -- began experiencing intermittent problems yesterday and today went completely black, according to Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research in Hanover, New Hampshire.
U.S. President Barack Obama said last week that Sony Pictures Entertainment had suffered significant damage and vowed to respond. North Korea warned yesterday that any U.S. punishment over the hacking attack on would lead to a retaliation “thousands of times greater.” North Korea has said it doesn’t know the identity of the hackers -- who call themselves “‘Guardians of Peace’’ -- claiming responsibility for breaking into Sony’s computer network and divulging internal e-mail messages.
‘‘The situation now is they are totally offline,’’ Madory said. ‘‘I don’t know that someone is launching a cyber-attack against North Korea, but this isn’t normal for them. Usually they are up solid. It is kind of out of the ordinary. This is not like anything I’ve seen before.”
Pyongyang, North Korea.
The attack on Sony’s computers exposed Hollywood secrets, destroyed data and caused the studio to cancel the release of “The Interview,” a comedy about a fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The hackers rendered thousands of computers inoperable and forced Sony to take its entire computer network offline.
Global Access
The outage probably isn’t a cut of a fiber-optic cable, which would be shown in an immediate loss of connectivity, and other possible explanations include a software meltdown on North Korea’s Web routers or denial-of-service hacking attacks, Madory said.
Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, told reporters in Washington today she can’t confirm reports of cyber-attacks on North Korea and won’t say what steps the U.S. may take in response to the Sony attack.
“We are considering a range of options in response,” Harf said at a State Department briefing. “Some will be seen. Some may not be seen.”
While North Korea has four networks connected to the Internet, the U.S. has more than 152,000 such networks, according to Dyn Research.
“We have no new information regarding North Korea today,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan wrote in an e-mail today. “If in fact North Korea’s Internet has gone down, we’d refer you to that government for comment.”
China has started an investigation into a possible North Korean role in the Sony hacking following a request from the U.S. government, a person with direct knowledge of the matter has said. The foreign ministry will cooperate with other Chinese agencies including the Cyberspace Administration to conduct a preliminary investigation, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the probe hasn’t been made public.
North Korea’s Internet outage was earlier reported by the North Korea Tech blog.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jordan Robertson in Washington at jrobertson40@bloomberg.net