The Associated Press is reporting that the US didn’t hack back North Korea after the Sony Pictures debacle. Two senior US officials say that the country wasn’t responsible for North Korea going dark.
While Obama did threaten a ‘proportional’ response to North Korean cyberattacks on Sony Pictures, two senior officials have told the news wire that it was nothing to do with the government. Apparently debates within the Obama administration have raged over whether or not the US should speak out publicly about its lack of involvement in North Korea’s internet failure.
The AP has learned that it wasn’t “immediately clear even within the administration whether rogue hackers or other governments disrupted North Korea’s networks.” Clearly, if the anonymous statements are accurate, the dust must have settled.
So who did do it? As James Cowie, chief scientist at Dynamic Network Services, told the AP: “There’s nothing you can point to that says it has all the hallmarks of an attack by a nation state. It could have been anybody.” Well, that clears things up. [AP]