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New York Magazine / "Sony's Very, Very Expensive Hack"

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Careful with NY Mag, lol:

http://nymag.com/news/articles/reasonstoloveny/2014/mohammed-islam-stock-trading/

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I also just want to be clear that I don't think these assh*les are even remotely capable of whatever it is they're claiming they'll do, when it comes to actually killing.

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I would tend to agree with you, but then I remember what two idiots did with a pressure cooker at the Boston Marathon. I know that's an order magnitude less than a 9/11 style attack, but it's still terrorism.

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I always knew James Franco and Seth Rogen would cause World War III

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Well, that dumbass Franco already released that monkey plague that wipes out most of mankind and helped that one ape rise to power over the other apes.

F-ing Franco.

Why is Sony in danger of not recovering from this? Most of the public isn't paying attention to this any more than what our politicians are doing. If Sony puts out a movie people want to see they will go and not care that Angelina Jolie is "underpaid" or some Sony exec is a racist.

Just an awful precedent to set. Pulling the movie will create more problems than running with it would.

This is unfortunately the world we live in nowadays.

Everybody is so scared of offending someone, that even the slightest threat (not to this level), is viewed as a reason to stop doing something...

The reason people are taking the threats seriously enough to pull the movie from theaters is that they have already pulled off one of the most public hacking attacks in history.

When some right-wing nutjob sends anonymous emails threatening violence because a rom-com features a gay couple, no one will react because they haven't given anyone any reason to take their threats seriously.

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The reason people are taking the threats seriously enough to pull the movie from theaters is that they have already pulled off one of the most public hacking attacks in history.

When some right-wing nutjob sends anonymous emails threatening violence because a rom-com features a gay couple, no one will react because they haven't given anyone any reason to take their threats seriously.

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This. If it's just another random movie no one cares.

Issue is that this is not just another random movie. This is a movie about an attempt to kill on the most effed up dangerous dictators in the world. It's politically charged and it carries a little more weight than a rom-com would.

News panel just now was discussing the hackers and said it is not beyond the realm of possibility that North Korea itself or someone contracted by North Korea could be behind all this. No evidence obviously but just discussing that it's not out of the question that they do something like this.

When the movie is tied to someone who has a track record like Kim Jong Un then people tend to be hesitant.

Doesn't really matter imo. If you have controversial movie about topic X, and someone successfully scares you into pulling the movie with threats, then anyone who cares about controversial movies on topics Y, Z, etc will think they can get similar results. This is the danger. A bunch of nut jobs who think they can get what they want with threats and who will be pressured to make good on their threats when people finally ignore the threats and run with the movies.

Stupid, short-sighted move that will have long-term consequences.

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A bunch of nut jobs who think they can get what they want with threats and who will be pressured to make good on their threats when people finally ignore the threats and run with the movies.

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Which is pretty much where we were before the Sony hacking, right? So no long-term meaningful change.

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A bunch of nut jobs who think they can get what they want with threats and who will be pressured to make good on their threats when people finally ignore the threats and run with the movies.

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Which is pretty much where we were before the Sony hacking, right? So no long-term meaningful change.

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No studio has previously given in to those types of demands before, so no. My point is that this will invite more of these loons to make threats in the hope of getting what they want because there is objective evidence this tactic can work.

So are you suggesting they ignore the threats and play the movie to take some kind of stance?

Should I threaten to blow up my own TV if Sharknado 33 1/3 "The Pyongyang Invasion" is green lighted?

I don't know if you ignore the threats, but you definitely play the movie.

I bet Sony moves the premiere away from Christmas before they pull it outright. Or they edit out the death scene of Kim Jung Un.

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Sharknado 33 1/3 "The Pyongyang Invasion"

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I'd watch it!

Does North Korea have the capacity to pull off a terrorist attack in the first place? Are there sleeper cells of North Koreans or North Korean sympathizers who would actually attempt something violent?

^ I seriously doubt it. But the problem is we're not certain it's North Korea. Sure, it probably is, and that's what everyone's assuming, but there's also the chance it could be someone else who is capable of pulling off an attack (however unlikely). Again, I don't think anything's going to happen, but assuming it's not going to happen because North Korea isn't capable does seem a bit shortsighted (not calling you shortsighted, I just keep seeing a lot of people making this assumption).

Who else would care this much other than North Korea?

It's not likely, but it could be China, or it could be those Japanese guys who got laid off by Sony mentioned earlier. We talked about it a bunch on the previous two pages.

North Korea could probably pull off a terrorist attack if it wanted to (Something simple like shooting up a movie theater wouldn't be terribly hard) but, if this was the Koreans, the violence was probably a bluff. For one, a physical attack would leave a physical trail of evidence that could likely be traced to NK, and that would basically be a declaration of war. The Koreans are always bluffing and rattling their sabers.

I read it but it just doesn't add up. No way China would risk escalation over something so trivial. This is NK making empty threats.

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It's not likely, but it could be China, or it could be those Japanese guys who got laid off by Sony mentioned earlier. We talked about it a bunch on the previous two pages.

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Russia (or hackers residing in) has been suspected in the hacks of several U.S. companies to include JPMorgan Chase. I don't see what kind of ax they would have to grind in this specific instance though.

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This is NK making empty threats.

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The problem is that this group does have credibility because the hack of Sony was so thorough. That took dedication and organization. So you know they're dangerous. It's just a question of if you equate cyber attacks with physical violence.

I don't think there will be any kind of physical attack, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they ended up doing something like stealing the Credit Card numbers for a lot of people who went and saw the movie. The phrase "9-11 type attack" certainly sounds like it's a physical threat, but it's also possible that it's just referring to the scope.

So....I didn't really know what this movie was actually about until just now,

Wierd.

I saw an interview with a current lawyer and former CIA operative and his opinion was that it was absolutely North Korea and it was almost assuredly an empty threat.


It's definitely not from inside the United States in my opinion, as I don't think even the best hackers would risk the consequences that that these guys currently are.

^ That's really interesting.

I obviously knew North Korea was super f-ed up, but I saw an interview on The Daily Show last week with a woman who used to teach there, and it was still astonishing to hear how closed off those citizens are. There's all the usually jokes about them believing all the insane crap Kim Jon-un has "accomplished," but like I mentioned earlier, I had no idea they don't even know the internet exists. Just no concept whatsoever about the outside world.

If any good comes of this, maybe it leads to some kind of covert retaliation on our part, and we finally really do take down those clowns running that country.

If it really did end up being done from within the country, and the guy(s) were caught, how much time are they looking at, do you think?

Why Sony Pictures should release The Interview online

Here's the thing about the Sony hack: From an info-sec standpoint, this is one of the first times a hack has taken place that actually resembles how Hollywood has portrayed them. Hacks happen all the time, if you monitor the tech sector you are familiar with this. But the thing about these hacks is that they are usually meant to glean some sort of customer information that can be used for fraudulent purposes, like credit card and social security numbers, etc. Most hacks are discovered after the fact. Sometimes months afterwards. The reason for this is that hackers, by and large, don't want to be discovered. They want to get in and out of systems they compromise in complete secrecy, ideally employing zero-day exploits that no one knows about and no one knows to defend against. Get in, get the data, get out, leave no trace that you were there.

The Sony hack here is completely different from them, and it is enormous in its magnitude. The hackers didn't try to remove the fact they were there. They willfully destroyed huge amounts of data and made off with terabytes of it, I've seen estimates of 150+ terabytes. They literally got everything. They've released emails, unreleased movies, medical records...they got it all. And that's far from all they did. They brought the entire organization to its knees by sending them back 30 years when they completely disabled every workstation and email server. This isn't a profit-seeking hack, it is full-scale cyberterrorism against a company by people who want to destroy it completely. They've held the data they've stolen as ransom, dripping it out slowly in chunks to magnify the damage of them. The class action lawsuits by Sony employees (and former employees) are already starting to be filed.

My theory? This isn't North Korean talent, but I think they are mercenaries funded by North Korea. A couple of weeks ago, when the threats against showing The Interview started and that Korean characters were found in the code of the exploit, it could have been said that it was a fancy red herring to draw attention away from the real perpetrator. Threats of physical terrorism against the American public have been made now, and to me that means they have played a card that no one would do unless they are or represent the offending party, and that can only be North Korea now (whether they are employing Iranian or Chinese hackers to carry it out).

The sheer balls they have to take the threats out of the digital realm and into the real world, against innocent people, is shocking. The rhetoric is out of a Hollywood movie. The whole thing is just unreal, and has never been experienced before. I don't think anyone actually will be in danger when (if?) the movie launches on Christmas, but the fact they have an entire industry in this country starting to fold like a cheap tent shows just how deadly serious people are taking it. Thats why, if nothing else, I hope Sony just releases it online (as suggested in the link I posted) to get it out there, even if the movie theaters won't play ball. Go down swinging. I think the American public will have their back if they do, and help assuage the fact that terrible, TERRIBLE security protocols by Sony, who knew they weren't that secure (leaked emails testify to this), were why this happened in the first place.

Check out all the coverage of North Korea that Vice has put out. They were the ones who got Dennis Rodman and The Harlem Globetrotters in there... It is truly fascinating stuff.

The Hermit Kingdom

The Vice Guide to North Korea - 3 Part Series

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If it really did end up being done from within the country, and the guy(s) were caught, how much time are they looking at, do you think?

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Do you mean inside the US?

I would imagine life.

The U.S. won't retaliate against N.K. for this. Not too long ago, N.K. shelled a South Korean island and killed a few people, and nobody retaliated over it.

Let's be honest though, the eventual movie about these hacks will be awesome. Hopefully Sorkin writes it.

Counter with a threat that WHEN the movie is released to theaters IF anyone is harmed in a terrorist attack a new miniseries about Kim Jong Un will begin production. Made by Lifetime.