back to article FBI fingering Norks for Sony hack: The TRUTH – by the NSA's spyboss

The head of the NSA has confirmed his agency gave the FBI top-secret intelligence that led the Feds to blame North Korea for the Sony Pictures mega-hack. The bureau has been strangely silent on how it came to finger the Nork government for the comprehensive ransacking of the Hollywood movie studio. So silent, in fact, seasoned …

  1. FuzzyTheBear
    Stop

    Hold on a second

    The NSA boss telling us the truth ? .. which version , in which universe ?

    NSA bosses have constantly lied to Congress to the President and to the public ..

    You cant take anything he says at face value and certainly not believe anything that guy says.

    Credibility is 0 , This seems like a step in overthrowing NK's government nothing else

    Can't believe a word that comes out the USA's intelligence community.,

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hold on a second

      Its a bit more than a step at overthrowing NK's government, its a damned good excuse to justify their budget and snooping powers to government and the people. An attempt to repair the damage caused by Snowden.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Hold on a second

        Its [sic] a bit more than a step at overthrowing NK's government, its [still sic] a damned good excuse to justify their budget and snooping powers to government and the people.

        I'd call that "a bit less than a step at overthrowing", thank goodness. I doubt the NSA has any interest in seeing the DPRK overthrown, particularly since it helps justify their existence. Nor, I suspect, do most serious members of the US Federal executive branch want anything to do with attempting to unseat the Kim regime. A failed state run by a pampered, adolescent dictator and his cronies is bad; the same state in civil chaos might well be far worse.

        And the DPRK is far too useful to China for the Chinese to sit by idly while the US pokes at it.

        No, the current standoff is a Nash equilibrium for most of the players with any real influence. Disrupting it isn't likely to put any of them in a better position, at least in the short term.

        It's clearly useful for the US SIGINT community to blame one of our current roster of bogeymen for the Sony hack, and so they have. They might be right, but that's pretty irrelevant from their point of view. Hell, it's largely irrelevant from mine.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hold on a second

      Isn't it time to start being honest? Nothing nobody can say to you will convince you, as it means that by supporting the Sony hack, it now turns out you were also supporting terrorism. The same terrorism that is all around us in other forms recently.

      All because Sony did something you didn't agree with once... I think you need to take a valuable lesson from this.

    3. Doctor_Wibble

      Re: Hold on a second

      Not wanting to sound like some conspiracy nut, but the phrase 'false flag' is jumping up and down begging for attention!

      A carefully planned and executed data-extraction attack going smoothly and entirely undetected suddenly has someone giving the target a quick direct ping by mistake? And given the amount of random probes and hack/login attempts that happen on even a home IP address, I could start logging traffic and 'prove' that the Chinese government is obviously trying a grass-roots takeover, competing against Iran, Azerbaijan, Romania, and occasionally for some reason, Norway and Iceland. And sometimes even in alliance with each other which is the obvious conclusion because attacking at the same time could not possibly be coincidence.

      Of course if NSA/TLA publishes their 'evidence' nobody is going to believe it and they only have themselves to blame. Plus remarks by others about letting it continue without saying anything.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hold on a second

        Well, let's see. People don't like or trust the NSA because of their dragnet data gathering, be it cell phone or internet based.

        Suddenly, the director mentions observing a small number of connections in the clear, from a new network warfare group, then the connections halted and began via the known proxies being used.

        Not difficult, if the same methods and targets were hit within a short time span.

        Remember, a new network warfare group...

        I wonder how much they got from the proxies as well... ;)

        A handful of years ago, a US government agency I was working for was plagued by Chinese military hackers. Incessant attacks, which continue on today.

        One day, I noticed an intelligence bulletin, which listed one hacker's name, home address, home number, officer address, office number, his photograph, the same with his girlfriend. He apparently had been online and communicating with her via a method that shan't be shared (but wasn't Skype).

        Also in the report was a listing of software prepared for an upcoming attack. Three different versions.

        Strangely, three attacks were utterly unsuccessful. After dozens of successful attacks. :D

    4. N13L5

      Re: Hold on a second

      Of course not, they have to swear an oath never to tell the truth, before they start working there...

      The eye in the pyramid on the dollar bill starts to make sense. The corporate surveillance state of the west with its five-eyes network. Just looking at the NSA / USA alone means falling for another error.

  2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

    The NSA bot is telling elements of truth.

    This bit is true

    "[Cybercrime] is that times a million. Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde could not do a thousand robberies in all 50 states in the same day in their pajamas, from Belarus. That’s the challenge we face today,” Comey told attendees."

    And law enforcement needs some way to detect and prevent these crimes. Problem is-

    "Several times, either because they forgot or they had a technical problem, they connected directly—and we could see them," he said. "They shut it off very quickly before they realized their mistake, but not before we saw it and knew where it was coming from."

    So is the NSA saying they were aware of ongoing attacks against Sony, but did nothing? They didn't notify the FBI so they could have a quite word with Sony and explain they had a problem? Seems a rather awkward position the Admiral has put his agency in. Either this is a post-facto detection after some archive trawling, which would indicate Sony wasn't a high value target worth protecting, or it had more timely evidence but chose to do nothing with it.

    "Sony is important to me because the entire world is watching" but seemingly it wasn't important enough when they were watching the attacks taking place in September.

    1. Rabbit80

      Re: The NSA bot is telling elements of truth.

      "So is the NSA saying they were aware of ongoing attacks against Sony, but did nothing?"

      Or they only found the data afterwards which proves the bulk collection of data is ineffective at preventing internet related crime since trying to find a needle in an ever increasing haystack gets exponentially more difficult.

    2. thames

      Re: The NSA bot is telling elements of truth.

      Either this is a post-facto detection after some archive trawling, ... or it had more timely evidence but chose to do nothing with it.

      The way he phrased it implies that they saw it as it was happening. "They shut it off very quickly before they realized their mistake, but not before we saw it and knew where it was coming from."

      Either he's lying about having evidence, or he's lying about when they discovered it, or he's admitting they knew about a crime in progress but chose to do nothing about it. None of these possibilities puts the NSA in a good light or adds to their (already rather low) credibility.

      I would not be surprised if they actually had no idea what really happened but realize that they will have a massive amount of egg on their faces if they don't come up with some sort of an answer, so it's simply a case of "arrest the usual suspects". I mean, North Korea has likely done something wrong at some point in the past year, so it's not like they don't deserve a mild kick in the shins from time to time anyway, is it? And why waste a good crisis if you can use the opportunity to ask for more money from the taxpayers?

      Canada was found to have been hacking into servers in Brazil on behalf of the NSA in order to steal the commercially sensitive data of major Brazilian mining and oil companies, so it's not like the "5 eyes" countries aren't busy doing exactly the same thing to every other country in the world. But that's OK right, because those Brazilian mining and oil companies were terrorizing the bottom lines of their "5 eyes" competitors? And it was all perfectly legal, right? At least that's what we're told.

      Me thinks Admiral Rogers is telling more than a few nose stretchers here, which shouldn't really surprise us.

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: The NSA bot is telling elements of truth.

        "Canada was found to have been hacking into servers in Brazil on behalf of the NSA in order to steal the commercially sensitive data of major Brazilian mining and oil companies, so it's not like the "5 eyes" countries aren't busy doing exactly the same thing to every other country in the world."

        And why would the NSA ask Canada to hack into that which they have the capability to hack into themselves?

        1. thames

          Re: The NSA bot is telling elements of truth.

          @Wzrd1 - And why would the NSA ask Canada to hack into that which they have the capability to hack into themselves?

          There's two reasons. One is that it's an alliance, so some tasks get split up to share out the work load.

          The main reason though is that the NSA is not allowed to conduct industrial espionage (neither are CSEC or GCHQ). However, if Canada hoovers up data but doesn't look at it, then that doesn't count as "collecting" the data. If the US reads data provided by another country, then that is legal, because they weren't the ones to hoover up the data in the first place. The same goes in reverse of course. So it's all technically "legal", provided you split enough hairs about what they're actually doing.

          If you read some past news reports, you will see that the "five eyes" have been saying that "collecting data" doesn't technically count as "intercepting" unless a human actually reads it. From the above, you can see why they do this sort of hair splitting. The "five eyes" alliance is as much about mutual back scratching to help each other get around their own laws as it is for any technical or geographic reason.

  3. Hud Dunlap
    WTF?

    More Sanctions?

    I thought we had so many because of the Nuclear Program we couldn't add any more.

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: More Sanctions?

      Maybe they're putting sanctions on the sanctions?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: More Sanctions?

        That would make it a layered sanctions cake.

  4. Message From A Self-Destructing Turnip

    Evil layer cake

    Is the NSA the cherry on the top?

    1. Blitterbug
      Unhappy

      Re: Evil layer cake

      Where's the obligatory Daniel Craig photo...?

  5. Brian Miller

    Paging Dr. Evil, paging Dr. Evil...

    Your cake is ready, sir!

    Really, what other analogies could have been used? Evil mixed candies? Smörgåsbord of villainy?

    And if you are weird or creepy, you're on the watch list for evil people!

    1. PleebSmash

      Re: Paging Dr. Evil, paging Dr. Evil...

      "The descending layers included terrorists, organized criminal actors, sophisticated worldwide hackers and botnets, “hack-tivists,” weirdos, bullies, pedophiles, and creeps, he said."

      Hey, leave El Reg alone!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Paging Dr. Evil, paging Dr. Evil...

        It's the creeps we really have to be worried about.

        They're under the bed, in the cupboards, living next door. They're everywhere.

        Fortunately, the NSA knows where they all are. I feel safer already...

      2. Old Handle
        Holmes

        Re: Paging Dr. Evil, paging Dr. Evil...

        I'm trying to figure out if there's some sort of implied hierarchy. It starts out fairly reasonable, states, terrorists, organized crime. Then it gets weird with "sophisticated worldwide hackers and botnets" I must say this troubles me greatly. One doesn't normally describe people as "worldwide", and the inclusion of botnets is also strange, since no other tools are mentioned. Sounds too much like Skynet. Be that as it may, next we've got "hack-tivists", and I can understand why the NSA doesn't like them, so no surprise they feature just below the obviously scary stuff. But the last four are once again curious: weirdos, bullies, pedophiles, and creeps. What's the difference between a weirdo and a creep? What makes weirdos 3 levels eviler? I'd have thought creeps were worse than weirdos. Putting pedophiles so low on the list is a little surprising too, although I've long suspect they were just a smokescreen.

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: Paging Dr. Evil, paging Dr. Evil...

          I'm trying to figure out if there's some sort of implied hierarchy.

          Agreed. The NSA needs to publish some sort of specification for this, and preferably also adapt it for non-technical users with some simple scheme, perhaps color-coded. "Creeps are a Magenta threat, but weirdos are just a Teal one."

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sorry, I don't believe you

    This is all part of their campaign for unlimited spying, where they claim they've stopped X number of terrorist attacks and will claim they identified the culprits behind the Sony hack. Their claims of stopping all those attacks didn't stand up when people in congress with the necessary security clearances looked into the matter, I doubt these claims would hold up either.

    It is easy to lie to people when there's no way for them to either confirm or deny your statements. The "appeal to authority" by the FBI of bringing in another liar to vouch for them is like Ray Rice having Michael Vick vouch for his character (non-US readers, insert your example)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    If you can't find enough enemies, invent some more...

    "the topping on an "evil layer cake." The descending layers included terrorists, organized criminal actors, sophisticated worldwide hackers and botnets, “hack-tivists,” weirdos, bullies, pedophiles, and creeps,"

    You know what? I have a real problem with adding "weirdos" and "creeps" to this list, and maybe bullies as well. I have no real problem if someone wants to be "weird" and rattle on over the internet about the trilateral commission running the world or how space aliens invented the microwave oven--because I don't have to read that stuff. Likewise creeps. If there are guys out there that like to pleasure themselves to topless pics of Hollywood stars, then more power to them, because I don't have to join them in that. Social ostracization is the best way to handle people who you think fall into these categories, however, what they are doing IS NOT ILLEGAL AND SHOULD NOT BE SUBJECT TO GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE. Plus, what is "weird" today may be mainstream tomorrow.

    As for bullies, if what they are doing crosses the line into harassment, then lock em' up or sue them. But until they cross a legal line then treat them like jerks and ostracize them as well.

    I don't like the idea that anything "out of the norm" is going to put someone on the government's radar screen. Especially when we just had a major terrorist attack about which every second newstory bemoans how stretched security services are in trying to keep tabs on genuinely dangerous people.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: If you can't find enough enemies, invent some more...

      It's all about using every event to get more money and/or powers. If we're going to expand into creeps, wierdos, and bullies then we might as well include antisocial behaviour, self-harmers, and people with eating disorders and when that's declared a success we can include people who cost the health service money by drinking, smoking, and eating too much.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: If you can't find enough enemies, invent some more...

        Exactly.

        The headline should have read, "NSA boss says he needs even more money for his empire or the sky will fall in".

        Oh, and the MI5 boss said exactly the same thing today. Funny that. I wonder what other plans Theresonas May has up her sleeve, just waiting to unleash. For our "safety" of course.

        Never let a good crisis go to waste as they say.

  8. Mark 85
    FAIL

    There's a time and a place for confession and the good Admiral has blown it.

    If NSA was aware of the attack because they were monitoring traffic to and from NK and did nothing, they are part of the problem. If they weren't aware, then they're not doing their job. Collecting information is one thing, processing it is another. It doesn't matter how much info is collected, if it's never processed in a timely manner, then collecting it is useless.

    At this point, it seems like all NSA is good for is "after the fact" info and nothing else. Once upon a time, they were providing real-time intel. I guess they've become paper pushers. It'll be a sad day when there's a terrorist or missile attack and they won't realize it until the 11 o'clock news.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: There's a time and a place for confession and the good Admiral has blown it.

      Depending on the missile attack style, there won't be any 11 o'clock news and the NSA will have helped bugger all. And I'm not talking about mythical magic nukes from Iran on top of working launchers, a 100% Only Democracy In The Middle Eastern invention.

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: There's a time and a place for confession and the good Admiral has blown it.

        "a 100% Only Democracy In The Middle Eastern invention."

        Iran *was* a democracy, British oil interests were upset about Iran nationalizing the oilfields and asked the US to have the CIA overthrow the government.

        Truman said no, Eisenhower said yes. It was called Operation Ajax, which culminated with the installation of the Shah.

        Eventually, the Iranians booted the Shah and installed a democracy, but one that also can have any laws overruled by an ayatollah.

        As for Iranian nukes, I far prefer to chase plaid unicorns, which are far more numerous.

  9. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Trollface

    Lately, while President Obamacare wallowed in his certainties...

    "I remain very confident: this was North Korea"

    While I assume that the NSA knows its shit (though it would lie mercilessly about anything), this sounds to me like having one foot out the door already. It's going to close soon, leaving people in the rain.

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: Lately, while President Obamacare wallowed in his certainties...

      "While I assume that the NSA knows its shit"

      From my own, personal experience with them, yes, they know their shit quite well.

  10. CanadianMacFan

    You see what you want to see

    Isn't it weird that when they see a packet come a computer with an IP address that isn't North Korea then they assume proxy but when it's got a North Korean IP address they assume it's a direct connection? I'm not jumping to conclusions to who did the hacking but just saying that I don't see why it isn't possible for a computer in North Korea to have been hacked and used as a proxy just as easily as anywhere else.

    1. nsld

      Re: You see what you want to see

      You sound like one of those Treasonous hacktivist weirdos.....

      By pointing out the fud and smokescreen from the NSA, and that's before you add in something as simple as ip spoofing

    2. Kiwi

      Re: You see what you want to see

      I don't see why it isn't possible for a computer in North Korea to have been hacked and used as a proxy just as easily as anywhere else.

      When I'm having a sneaky look at a competitor's website and don't want to tip them off, I'll fire up tails or whonix to make sure that I don't leak.

      I'm not even close to being a hacker, but I know how to reasonably make sure others can't trace me.

      Once the basic infrastructure is in place, it should be quite hard to accidentally leave it.

      If, OTOH, I was to be using a bot-net or similar to attack someone, I'd certainly "accidentally" let some "direct connections" through.

    3. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: You see what you want to see

      More like the NSA got into the proxy and got to watch traffic on both sides.

      Hell, I'd not be surprised if the NSA got into their boxes as well.

  11. An0n C0w4rd
    WTF?

    quote article: questioning the official FBI narrative was “counterproductive,"

    yes, because blindly trusting everything the government says works so well?

    Oppressive regimes, say like North Korea, would LOVE it if people just blindly believed the government. Are the Feds really trying to say they're somehow better?

  12. Lapun Mankimasta

    " "I don't think it's realistic" for private companies "to deal with [cyberattacks] totally by themselves," he said."

    Hey, where did all the hype about deregulation go? During the hyper-hype on deregulation during the eighties and since then, the claim has been made that business should be allowed to regulate itself. The corolary of that is, let the buggers sink or swim. Don't hold them up.

    So much for that theory. No athiests in foxholes, as the saying goes, and they'll be around to kneecap you the instance you don't cough up ....

    " Rogers added that the NSA would be around to help with similar investigations in the future. "

    Sony deserves it bigtime. I would say they deserve all the help they can get; as we expect to be titllated by further leaks, floods, and tsunamis of data in the future.

  13. Alistair
    Windows

    The Federal Wall of Information.

    @Lapun - See "too big to fail", and the extensive use of said phrase in 2k8/2k9. However I agree with the intent of your comment.

    @FTB - "Can't believe a word that comes out the USA's any government's intelligence community." FTFY

    I fail to see *any* benefit to North Korea in hacking the crap out of Sony and making them look bad when Sony has an utter piece of complete and total shit movie coming out that mocks the dear leader. Furthermore the "evidence" provided indicates that the hack of Sony had been ongoing for quite some time - SO:

    a) either NK is not nor has it in any way had any involvement in the "Sony Hack" and anonymous individuals with real or imagined issues against Sony did this and its all a smoke screen because *no one* in a law enforcement position has any real concrete evidence of who dunnit.

    b) GWB's "Axis of evil" is being hauled out again because the connection between ISIS/ISIL/Random Syrian Terrorists and Prince Bandar (house of Saud) and the good old USofA is becoming impossible to ignore, and North Korea is a handy member of said Axis that is *not* trying to get on the USA "good books"

    c) "intelligence" agencies around the G12 have finally pointed out that sifting through the amount of crap that is social media, email, vpns, tor, etc etc etc has gotten to the point that there is *just too much* to track, and they need EITHER

    A crapton more money to run this mess, and a WHOLE lot more money to be able to hire, lock in a hermetically sealed control centre all the SME's needed to actually do this (leaving hearth and home, and disconnecting from the world for the rest of your life makes these folk pretty expensive)

    OR

    Tons of new regulations that will require every individual around the world to have ONE and ONLY ONE id on the internets, and all actions will be through a government sponsored proxy so they can filter the ideas that get through to the people back to the limited crap they had access to in the 50s.

    d) everything that leaked is bollocks, Sony posted it themselves, and this is all a huge advertising campaign to get enough money out of the movie to pay that dolt's salary.

    Its *way* too early on a saturday to be up but the launch was worth it.

    (Grumpy old bastard in a bathrobe watching the world)

    1. Keven E.

      Identity crisis

      ...every individual around the world to have ONE and ONLY ONE id on the internets, ...

      It's not too much to record, but perhaps track. It's not like the internet is *naturally anonomizing. "Close enough" here is easy enough to (eventually) figure out by correlation of all that data/history that's being collected.

      It sounds surprisingly similar <ahem> to the spawn of satan's push for "big data". So when the government does it in the guize of security, it sucks, but when corporations do it to try to sell you a set of tires for that car you just bought... well... ok, that sucks too.

      ... and all actions will be through a government sponsored proxy...

      I have little doubt that this isn't already (basically) happening.... there are no reasonables to think otherwise. (have you ever done a tracert without some hop along the way not telling you *who it is?) Maybe not for idea control (whatever), but what's the functional difference between a copier/slurper and a log on a proxy other than the intent to announce itself?

      <tin foil>

  14. -tim
    Black Helicopters

    So much for solid evidence

    IP addresses? Aren't the NK IP ranges some of the most abused via BGP peering? A few tend to flop between SK and China. The last time I pinged one, they seemed to be about 10 ms from a server in Los Angeles.

    If the spooks want people to believe them, may they should provide Dear Eater's porn or search history.

  15. Mikel

    Bah

    >"Several times, either because they forgot or they had a technical problem, they connected directly—and we could see them," he said.

    Or that is what the foreign hacker who compromised a PC in North Korea for just this purpose wanted you to see.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Get use to it

    The hacking situation is only going to get worse. Only naïve fools think otherwise.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Get use to it

      "The hacking situation is only going to get worse."

      And for that you can thank generations of management who don't give a shit about actual, _real_ security, vs mumbo-jumbo handwaving and religious rituals which may or may not have some effect but are of no use whatsoever when security is nonexistant in other directions.

      In the Old West it wasn't rare for banks to have bars and a showy vault door out front, with a wooden back wall on the "vault". That mentality hasn't gone away.

  17. KA1AXY

    He forgot one important layer

    "The descending layers included terrorists, organized criminal actors, sophisticated worldwide hackers and botnets, “hack-tivists,” weirdos, bullies, pedophiles, and creeps,"

    And, at the bottom, security agencies, poking thire noses in whether they are legally allowed or not.

  18. ecofeco Silver badge

    The NSA vouching for the FBI?

    Is this the same NSA that is spying on EVERYONE helping the FBI who just admitted to a few thousands mistake regarding forensic hair analysis?

    Those guys? Yeah. Sure.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "challenge" is he challenging all the hackers of the world?

    “[Cybercrime] is that times a million. Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde could not do a thousand robberies in all 50 states in the same day in their pajamas, from Belarus. That’s the challenge we face today,” Comey told attendees.

    He's set the rules

    a thousand robberies in all 50 states in the same day in their pajamas, from Belarus.

    I asume he's talking about a proxy in Belarus.

    you will need to send a photo to prove you were in your pj's

    Who's up for it??

    1. Queasy Rider

      Re: "challenge" is he challenging all the hackers of the world?

      “[Cybercrime] is that times a million."

      So is enforcement, so, cat, meet mouse.

  20. teebie

    How was this supposed to go?

    ~North Korea hacked Sony

    -Based on your past record, and lack of support for this weird claim, I do not believe you

    ~There is an evil cake

    -I am now utterly convinced

    1. Frumious Bandersnatch
      Holmes

      Re: How was this supposed to go?

      ~There is an evil cake

      I'm pretty sure that the evil cake is a lie.

  21. Cthonus
    Coat

    #FoxNewsFacts ?

  22. WereWoof

    With apologies to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein & The Sound Of Music Fans

    B. Obama: "How do you solve a problem like Korea?

    How do you catch a clown and pin him down?"

  23. dan1980

    'Lisa Monaco, President Obama's Homeland Security Adviser, said the many experts who dispute the government's claim of Norks nobbling Sony don't have enough evidence for their conclusions – and questioning the official FBI narrative was "counterproductive" . . .'

    Awww . . .

    Yes, dear, that's what happens when you spew lie after lie, get found out and then lie about that, get found out again and lie about that. Then lie to the elected representatives of your own citizens, get found out, lie about it and then do it again.

    This is the backdrop against which this is playing out. I'm sorry that no one believes you this time and hey - you may all even be telling the truth. Really, this time. But if anyone really expects anyone to actually believe them they they are not just arrogant and self-righteous but utterly deluded.

    The "you'll have to just trust me" line works when you've built up that trust. These agencies (and the government) never built trust and never asked for it to be given - they just went ahead and did whatever the hell they wanted and then lied about it.

    That anyone is actually asking people to swallow that line now is laughable.

    For my part, I very much hope they are telling the truth. Not because I want this to be some North Korean plot, but because I want these people to understand what it's like to have no one believe them despite the fact that they're telling the truth. Because that's what happens when you lie to people and they need to realise just how low their credibility is.

    1. asurazu
      Devil

      Good analogy

      That's a pretty much excellent analogy..

      "Yes, dear, that's what happens when you spew lie after lie, get found out and then lie about that, get found out again and lie about that. Then lie to the elected representatives of your own citizens, get found out, lie about it and then do it again."

      Couldn't put it better myself it's like all this crap where they spew on about none of the systems they've got are actually secure. There called Standards for a reason, people that read and understand RFC's know what those standards are, if you can't operate a system that conforms to ANSI/ISO 17024 instead of a POSIX based hobby operating system an if they're incapable of making the distinction between the two: Like for example: STRATFOR (running OpenBSD) and they're epic failure when targeted by hack'ta'vista's then that's not really everybody else's problem.

      That's "there" problem for hiring someone who claimed they knew what those standards where in the first place and then failed epically at there role as a security administrator. But I digress maybe there system's where left vulnerable after a shoddy "SSL update" with NSA/Inside!

      But in all a good catch, that if they knew Sony had a problem and then sat there twiddling there thumbs, whilst proclaiming the rest of the interwebs are seedy and dark and filled with botnet's who are we to argue, I mean only 750'000 of those botnets are probably under there own control.

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