US Officials Signed Off On Movie Depicting Assassination Of North Korean Leader

US Officials Signed Off On Movie Depicting Assassination Of North Korean Leader

Post Categories: Canada
NATHANIEL DOWNES | Monday, December 22, 2014, 17:26 Beijing

For months now, North Korea has been complaining about the upcoming film from Sony Pictures, “The Interview.” Repeated anonymous threats against theaters have resulted in its distribution being cancelled until further notice.

But, according to internal emails leaked by hackers earlier this year, Sony went to the US government for advice on how to handle the subject matter, and what the government told them may have caused the whole mess we have now.

You would expect the State Department to advise against the use of an actual foreign leader in a movie involving an assassination. Instead, the State Department, appears to have given their blessing, even on the gruesome details of North Korean’s spiritual leader, Kim Jong-un’s death as depicted in the film.

The hacking of Sony Pictures, the film’s distributor, was not done by any people affiliated with the reclusive Asian nation according to some official sources. This claim was countered by anonymous US officials who claimed that North Korea ordered the hack in order to prevent the films release.

Regardless of the truth, the hack, performed by a group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace,” did reveal a plethora of confidential emails and information from Sony.

These leaked emails reveal that shortly after the initial voice of concern was given by North Korea, Sony went to Bruce Bennett, from the RAND Corporation (a think tank funded by the US government), to see how serious the concern was. He appears to have dismissed the notion out of hand, telling Sony,

I also thought a bunch more about the ending. I have to admit that the only resolution I can see to the North Korean nuclear and other threats is for the North Korean regime to eventually go away.

In fact, when I have briefed my book on ‘preparing for the possibility of a North Korean collapse’ [Sept 2013], I have been clear that the assassination of Kim Jong-Un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government. Thus while toning down the ending may reduce the North Korean response, I believe that a story that talks about the removal of the Kim family regime and the creation of a new government by the North Korean people (well, at least the elites) will start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks into the North (which it almost certainly will). So from a personal perspective, I would personally prefer to leave the ending alone.

One of the government’s advisors, one with enough expertise to have written a book on North Korea, casually implies that assassination would be a positive thing? And we wonder why North Korea does not accept our claims of innocence in the matter?

The State Department admitted to the email conversations with Sony but played down the content of it. But the email is clear, they wished the movie to stay “as is,” and were hoping to see its use in a wave of anti-Kim propaganda with the intent of having the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un assassinated – just as North Koreans had claimed.

The movie did not originally feature North Korea. It was originally going to use a generic nation much like “The Dictator,” so as to make its satirical points and deliver its humor without causing an international incident.

After all, it may appear to be hypocritical when North Korea releases statements about attacking the US by nuclear strike, that the United States is always quick to denounce them.

And typically, they resort to generalized bluster, while this movie was very specific, very real, about its target. Encouraged by the US State Department, the filmmakers created something to-order, something which, as presented in the emails, could be used for propaganda purposes.

It is not hard to see how the despotic nation could view this movie as an effort to eliminate the leadership of the nation, and the implant a more friendly puppet.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/12/19/interview-movie/

Just Another Voice

BBC: What is FBI Evidence for North Korea Hack Attack? Evidence Not Fully Laid Out: Iraq’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction”?

Post Categories: Canada
Dave Lee, BBC | Sunday, December 21, 2014, 14:31 Beijing
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The FBI’s evidence has not been fully laid out

The FBI’s analysis has concluded North Korea is to blame for the attack on Sony Pictures – but how can it be sure?

As well as Pyongyang having a motive for taking serious issue with The Interview, there’s a couple of pieces of key evidence the US is now using to pin the blame.

However, they’re not without flaws.

As security researcher Brian Honan put it to me earlier: “I still don’t see anything that in a court would convict North Korea beyond reasonable doubt.”

So let’s take a look.

First, the FBI says its analysis spotted distinct similarities between the type of malware used in the Sony Pictures hack and code used in an attack on South Korea last year.

Suspicious, yes, but well short of being a smoking gun. When any malware is discovered, it is shared around many experts for analysis – any attacker could simply reversion the code for their own use, like a cover version of a song.

This has happened in the past – most notably with Stuxnet, a cyber-attack malware believed to have been developed by the US, which was later repurposed by (it is believed) the Russians.

The Chongryon

So we turn to another, better clue: IP addresses – known to be part of “North Korean infrastructure” – formed part of the malware too.

Sony may argue that no amount of security would have prevented what happened

This suggests the attack may have been controlled by people who have acted for North Korea in the past.

But what the FBI is very careful not to say is whether it thinks the attack was controlled from within North Korea itself – although in a press conference President Barack Obama did say there was no indication of another nation state being part of the hacking.

This is an important detail to pick apart.

Experts think it’s unlikely, if indeed it was North Korea, that the country could have acted alone. Unnamed US officials quoted by Reuters said the US was considering that people operating out of China, with its considerable cyber-attack capability, may have been involved.

Security researcher and former journalist Brian Krebs has quoted his own sources as saying Japan may also be in the picture. A piece of research by computer maker HP released this year noted the presence of North Koreans operating in Japan.

“Known as the Chongryon, [they] are critical to North Korea’s cyber and intelligence programs, and help generate hard currency for the regime,” Mr Krebs wrote in a blog post.

‘Off the hook’

Moving on into next year, the attack being attributed to a nation state rather than an independent hacking group is the one glimmer of good news for Sony.

There had been serious and mounting rumblings from both former employees and security analysts saying Sony did not take corporate security seriously enough – but words like “unprecedented” will bolster Sony’s defence that no amount of security would have prevented what happened.

President Obama: “We will respond in a place and time and manner that we choose”

“We have to wait and see what evidence they present later on but often nation states are the easier to blame,” said Marc Rogers, a security researcher for Cloudflare, who is sceptical about the extent of North Korea’s involvement.

“If it is a nation state people shrug their shoulders and say that they couldn’t have stopped it. It lets a lot of people off the hook.”

When the lawsuits come – and at least one has already been filed – Sony’s defence will almost certainly be that it did everything it reasonably could.

Mr Rogers is one of several security experts to question the use of The Interview as the obvious motive for the hack. It was not until the media made the link, Mr Rogers notes, that the hackers started mentioning the film.

Up until that point, it was all about taking on the company, with language that hinted more at a grudge than a political statement.

“When you look at the malware it includes bits and pieces from Sony’s internal network and the whole thing feels more like someone who had an issue with Sony,” Mr Rogers said.

“They were dumping some of the most valuable information right at the start almost as if they wanted to hurt Sony.”

The response

Truth be told, it’s extremely difficult to know for sure who is behind any cyber attack. Equally, it’s hard to prove who isn’t. As well as the evidence cited here, the FBI said “undisclosed intelligence” was the clincher in pinning it to North Korea. We may never know what that information was.

Some suggest that billing North Korea as a cyber villain is a convenient foe for the US. Respected technology magazine Wired went as far drawing a comparison between North Korea’s cyber “capability”, and Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”.

As we head into 2015, at least one senior US politician is calling for North Korea to be re-designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.

And with the government declaring it a matter of national security, the next thing for the US is to consider its response.

President Obama said: “We will respond proportionally, and we will respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.”

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC

This entry was posted in "Tip of the Spear", 4th Media, Cyberwarfare and Nuremberg Precedents, despotic academia, EPISTEMOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD, FALSE FLAG OPS, FASCISM AND IMPERIALISM, Full SPECTRA Dominance, IMPERIAL HUBRIS AND HYPOCRISY, Imperial Impotence. Bookmark the permalink.

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