Despite rumours that Sony Pictures would officially blame North Korea for the recent hack that exposed everything from its payroll to its employees medical records to unreleased scripts, a North Korean diplomat now says his country didn’t do it. The New York-based official says it’s just “another fabrication targeting the country”.
The unnamed diplomat added, “My country publicly declared that it would follow international norms banning hacking and piracy.”
It’s easy to see why people would think North Korea did it though. After all, Sony Pictures is about to release The Interview, a movie about assassinating Kim Jong-Un. There are some other disparate clues, too. While the hackers identified themselves as “Guardians of Peace” or #GOP, the attack itself bears the fingerprint of North Korea’s hackers. Last year, North Korea was blamed for a very similar attack on three major banks and two broadcasters in South Korea. Just as Sony Pictures’ computer screens were taken over by a message from the hackers, those victims saw their screens go blank and their networks rendered useless. The malware was also apparently written in Korean — at least partially — but that’s hardly a smoking gun as it appears to have been cobbled together from other malware.
Meanwhile, the mystery of the Sony Pictures hack is far from over. While Seth Rogen, who directed and starred in The Interview, will possibly enjoy a little lift at the box office thanks to all of this publicity, more revelations about the vast quantity of data stolen from Sony Pictures will screw up some people’s lives. It was just reported that the hack exposed the salary details of some 30,000 employees of Deloitte, a huge global accounting firm. And since only about 40GB have been released out of the 100 terabytes the hackers say they stole, there are surely more devastating revelations on the way. [Reuters]
Picture: Sony Pictures