North Korea has blamed the United States for its national
Internet outages, according to reports. At the same time, other reports suggest that the insular country may not be behind the original Sony Pictures hack in the first place, with the suggestion that it was actually pulled off by a former employee who had direct access to the studio's network.
A statement passed through the KCNA news agency
to Reuters directly blames the US. "The United States, with its large physical size and oblivious to the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses would, has begun disrupting the Internet operations of the main media outlets of our republic," reads the statement. One official speaking to the agency called the situation "truly laughable."
The North Korean Internet downtime was not caused by the United States, US government officials claim. An
earlier statement by President Barack Obama pointing to North Korean involvement in the Sony Pictures hack did advise the US would "respond proportionately," though declined to suggest what kind of retaliation would take place. North Korea continues to claim it was
not involved.
While the FBI claims North Korea had something to do with the Sony hack, at least one security expert has spoken out doubting the security agency's findings. Speaking
to CBS News, Kurt Stammberger of security firm Norse advises "Sony was not just hacked, this is a company that was essentially nuked from the inside. We are very confident that this was not an attack master-minded by North Korea and that insiders were key to the implementation of one of the most devastating attacks in history."
Norse's findings involves a woman called "Lena" connected to the Guardians of Peace hacking group. Lena is believed to have worked for Sony Pictures in Los Angeles for ten years, and left the company in May. "This woman was in precisely the right position and had the deep technical background she would need to locate the specific servers that were compromised," claims Stammberger. While Stammberger admits that there are "North Korean fingerprints" on the attack, it is believed they are red herrings or decoys, with the malware behind the attack apparently being used by a number of hackers, rather than just those sympathetic to North Korea.
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