Update: Sony Pictures "made a mistake" in pulling The Interview, President Obama said
in his year-end press conference Friday. “We cannot have a society
where some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the
United States. Because if somebody’s going to intimidate them for
releasing a satirical movie, imagine what’s going to happen when there’s
a documentary they don’t like?"
Earlier: The
Federal Bureau of Investigation has officially named the North Korean
government responsible for the major security breach and cyber attack at
Sony Pictures. The FBI was able to make the determination in part
through technical analysis of the malware used in the attack.
In a statement released Friday afternoon,
the FBI said, “We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of
this attack on a private sector entity and the ordinary citizens who
worked there.” The release went on to say, “Cyber threats pose one of
the gravest national security dangers to the United States.”
The FBI statement echoed Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson
who on Thursday called the hack on Sony Entertainment “very serious.”
Johnson said the Obama administration is considering “a range of
options” in response to the attack.
“Our government has been slow to
respond given the magnitude of this,” says Yahoo Finance’s Henry
Blodget. “If it was state-sponsored in any way, it was effectively an
act of war on a U.S. asset. We have not defined that as an act of war
but going forward we probably should.”
Now that North Korea has been
identified as the responsible party, corporations can go back to
wringing their hands over what the big picture is: This may be the
beginning of a new wave of attacks. Attacks that could take out a
company or in more severe cases, cripple the entire financial system or
the broader economy.
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Blodget says it’s “open season”
now and what comes next could affect far more people and entities. “It’s
not just they get some credit card numbers which we’ve been seeing
forever. But they actually get into the money” at large corporations and
banks. That sort of hack could be devastating.
It would make stealing credit
card data and personal email addresses—like in the Target and Home Depot
hacks-- seem like child’s play. The Sony breach exposed a new and
deeper threat. It wasn’t about stealing credit cards to resell them on
the web, it was about taking down a company. Sony cancelled the release of
"The Interview." And that's a financial hit for sure. But the hack also
left employees scared and exposed, stealing and exposing healthcare
information, employee e-mail addresses and e-mails involving private
information about clients.
Blodget says what was further
unsettling about the Sony attack is that it wasn't a particularly
sophisticated hack. “We’re only now beginning to understand how this was
done,” he says. “And we don’t really know, but the early indications
are it’s not that complicated. It takes focused, intelligent, talented
work, but not mysticism or huge internal spies.”
Blodget believes attacks against
corporations are going to be more and more common. “I think that
Silicon Valley is waking up and saying maybe we should be putting
everything in email,” he says.
He says it will also bring into
question storing sensitive data in a cloud. “Corporate America for the
last several years has been saying 'Ah the cloud is dangerous, we don’t
control it.' And now we think about it—who do you want to controlling
it?”
Culled from Yahoo Finance
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