politics

Sony hack puts Abe in bind over N Korea abductee talks

23 Comments
By Linda Sieg

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Apparently the entire North Korean internet is down - the whole country has lost the internet connection. Not much is known, but the US government is refusing to comment.

One rumour is that Mrs Kim had to unplug it to use the phone.

7 ( +8 / -1 )

I really doubt the US is pushing Japan to take a hard line against North Korea. And both countries have probably already formed a game plan for Japan's abduction negotiations with NK.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

The abduction and the cyber hacking issues are and should be kept as two different issues.

But the Noreans should apologize for both.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

The opening sentence of this article bases the premise on;

'U.S. accusations that North Korea was behind the cyberattack on Sony Pictures....'

The irony is we are expected to believe this data loss was due to North Korean hackers extracting 100 terrabytes, that is a 100,000 gigabytes of data from Sony servers without anybody noticing?

Just why is there a general acceptance that the Sony administrator did not notice that 100T's of data was being leached from Sony servers?

We are lead to believe not one SONY employee, executive or senior executive was alerted before this massive block of data was stolen.

On top of the fact that the above scenario is outrageous, anybody who comprehends just how much data 100T represents a highly impossible task to be able to download 100T of data to North Korea from a US-based server in the first place. Even if the pipeline was open and its source invisible to Sony, the process would take months at best.

If 100T of data was stolen;

the probabilities are it was stolen by a person or persons connecting hard drives to servers and leaching directly.

Which would logically make this an inside job. And if this is true, this would not just be any inside job either. In point of fact, the sheer logistics mean many Sony employees would have been involved in the theft. This isn't without recent precedence either as Edward Snowden took his 'whistleblower' data and released information gathered from the inside.

So if this indeed was an inside job, the system administrators had to have known about the theft. As nobody steals 100T overnight, or does it without someone noticing.

Just how naive does the SONY public relations group think the public is?

3 ( +6 / -3 )

@Paul Richards the problem is, everything you just said to counter sonys claims can equally be countered. You can't just hook up a hard drive in a data center and expect it not to be notice. And Sony deals in video. Hi quality uncompressed video. They are not going to use the same kinds of connections the average consumer would use. An oc-48 connection can transfer data at 2488.32 Mbit/s. But whether N Korea can receive that much data is another question. The majority of IT professionals in that country think their Intranet is the Internet. I would take their ability to have that kind of infrastructure with a grain of salt. Doesn't mean they didn't sponsor it through a 3rd party though.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

“The Sony hacking, however, could end up giving Abe a face-saving excuse to end the talks if they aren’t yielding results.”

Such outcome remains to be seen. but, based on the track records of Abe's admin on dealing with N.K in those talks, it does not sound very promising.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

There are about 1,000 on line subscriber in N Korea according to CHH talk show. //they don;t know how many people have telephone or computer but they say there are about 300 cyber police. N Korea subscribe on line of China. It is called cyber vamdalism by N Korea (Obama). SONY Pictures announced that it will release the movie in USA. Maybe DVD and or Blue Ray to make money but hasn't said which platform. Just announced it will be for USA people/

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Back on topic please.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

LHommeQuiMent

Nobody in the hacking community thinks that the Sony attack was orchestrated by North Korea. As mentioned in an above post, NK simply does not have the infrastructure to download hundreds of terabytes of data in a short amount of time.

You don't need advanced infrastructure for something like this.

You need bitcoins, and a lot of them.

Why does the "hacking community" think that this has to have originated from NK for it to have been a NK operation?

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Japan should take individual decision by itself in some case for it`s own interest. It should not depend on USA for everything as an independent country. Of course, it is important to make good relation with USA in present situation, but should maintain individualism.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I'm fairly sure the relatives of abductees must be p*ssed off about Sony right now.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Why does the "hacking community" think that this has to have originated from NK for it to have been a NK operation?

Cyberjunky and Dr.Krypt3ia have written some nice articles about it.

http://marcrogers.org/2014/12/21/why-i-still-dont-think-its-likely-that-north-korea-hacked-sony/

http://krypt3ia.wordpress.com/2014/12/20/fauxtribution/

While it is theoretically possible that DPRK could have used their allies in Iran, Russia, Syria or Japan (Chongryon) there is no clear evidence yet.

US and Israel developed Stuxnet to attack Iran but once the codebase was available Russians worked on it and wrote their Stuxnet-like malware to attack US energy companies. Possibly some groups have written their own version of DarkSeoul malware and have used it to attack Sony.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

US and Israel developed Stuxnet to attack Iran but once the codebase was available Russians worked on it and wrote their Stuxnet-like malware to attack US energy companies. Possibly some groups have written their own version of DarkSeoul malware and have used it to attack Sony.

The fact that Russians had to build upon a US/Israel program because they didn't have the knowledge to create their own from scratch tells a lot about what Russia or N Korea can do, and you'd have to be the loyalist of the loyal to access networks outside the country. The people might accidentally learn there's a whole other world outside their country.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

news: Houston and Atlanta ares theaters will show this movie. Sony stated that it did not cancel It is ready for showing. A theater owner did not say if metal detecters are used. He just said his theater will show.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The "hate speech" demonstrations are permitted only in Japan. I think it's illegal in all countries. Many of the Koreans are descendants of those who were forced to come (abducted) to Japan as laborers during Japan's 1910-1945 colonization.

Do you know a country that allows the "hate speech" demonstrations?

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

Nobody in the hacking community thinks that the Sony attack was orchestrated by North Korea. As mentioned in an above post, NK simply does not have the infrastructure to download hundreds of terabytes of data in a short amount of time. Nationwide speed is around 2 Gbit/s. Also state sponsored hackers do not use Pastebin or fancy names like Guardians of Peace. The proofs presented by FBI are not convincing enough, they need to hire a better consultant next time.

Currently North Korean primary/secondary DNS servers and some government sites are under an DOS attack. NK had only 1024 allocated IP addresses (2 ^ 10) and two more assigned IP blocks (one by China Unicom, the other by Russian Satgate) (*1). To put it in perspective US has billions of IPs ( more than 2 ^ 30). They were an easy target and some independent groups with limited resources have been attacking them for about a week now. The attacker is not US government for sure, if they wanted they could do it in less than a few minutes (seconds?).

(*1) http://nknetobserver.github.io/

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

Why? Because now the NK internet is down they can't receive his emails?

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Of course NK could always depend on the services and infasturcture of the government of China whose military have the infrastructure and capability to hack away at there hearts content. But that is scurrilous mischief making without foundation what was I thinking...

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

The hack done by N.K to Sony inadvertently exposes the flaws and weakness of Abe’s admin:

a. Japan’s loyalty to its long-term ally: this is not first time Abe irked Washington for his questionalbe dealings with N.K. For instance, in early July this year, Secretary of State John Kerry called Kishida and pointed out that Whitehouse should be consulted first before Abe would visit North Korea.

b. Japan’s misguided foreign policy: Abe’s foreign policy was primarily driven by Abe and co’s nationalistic sentiment against its big neighbor – China, Abe has spent incredible time and energy with an attempt to build an alliance to isolate China since 2013, to do that, he has flirted with Putin and opened checkbook to the countries which have territory disputes in South China Sea. But, Judging by the results, Abe’s foreign policy has success little when it comes to his goal.

In short, Abe is singing out of tone with the rest world, his political N.K drama is losing audiences, fast.

Hopefully, Abe will wake up and smell the reality soon.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Ethan

a. Japan consulted Whitehouse, and the Press Secretary Saki admitted it took place in May. But John Kerry changed his attitude after being lobbied by South Korea. SK wants to sabotage whatever Japan does.

b. Abe visited all the countries China visited. He also met with Putin several times and South East countries who have conflicts with China, and strenghened the ties with them. Abe met Xi too.

As for NK, Abe hasn't had any result yet, so nothing will get worse anyway. He won the election and mandate.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

tinawatanabe; "And I also know that only Koreans ask that question. What do you think of much stronger "hate speech" against Japan and Japanese in SK, most of which involve physical violence."

So, you KNOW "only Koreans ask that question" then ask the question in the very next line yourself, as a Japanese? You are proof that the government and right-wingers in Japan would not give one single iota about: "Accusing Pyongyang for the hack could also spark a backlash against ethnic Koreans in Japan". In fact, you try and justify hate speech by suggesting 'all countries' allow it, when not only do they NOT allow it, they make it illegal. Some nations do, for sure, but not all, and not only Koreans, as you yourself clearly indicate, ask that question (and I doubt John is Korean but simply asking why the hate is not only allowed here, but encouraged by people like you).

This would only put Abe in a tough position if people actually held him accountable for his promises and his failures. As the man in the article said, "This doesn't really pose a problem for him at the moment". He can easily side with the US and say that the talks breaking off as a result are all on the side of NK, relieving any pressure on him about not being able to live up to his promise to resolve the talks. He would be right that most of the problem lies with NK, of course, but it would still just be deflection.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

CGB Spender: "I'm fairly sure the relatives of abductees must be p*ssed off about Sony right now."

If it ultimately affects the search for answers, yes, but it would be a misdirection of anger if the search for answers was the result of Abe siding with the US on this very separate issue and as a face-saver for reneging on his promises.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Do you know a country that allows the "hate speech" demonstrations?

Yes, all the advanced countries do. And I also know that only Koreans ask that question. What do you think of much stronger "hate speech" against Japan and Japanese in SK, most of which involve physical violence.

-7 ( +3 / -10 )

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