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+--- Thread: Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! (/thread-13465.html)
Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! - Magda Hassan - 23-12-2014
Drew Phipps Wrote:I wonder if the original intent of linking the movie to the attack was for free publicity for the movie.
I've heard that the leak was from Sony publicity department too. If so not a good move as no cinemas are risking screening it - already been released on the net for free - has been likened to Saturday Night Live on a bad night - not that funny really.
Also Sony seems to have employed Barbara Streisand's lawyer with their heavy handed threats to sue Twitter users posting links or images of the leaks.
Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! - Peter Lemkin - 24-12-2014
Now, it is really farce....started as a cheap movie farce, with hateful and provocative premise to the storyline, now is a film (first I believe) endorsed by the President as one to see. It was 'pulled' due to fears for viewer's safety, and now with no less danger, it is again to be shown in theaters starting tomorrow...but look at all the free publicity and trailers on every channel making Americans think of the CIA killing the President of N. Korea. Makes one sick the way this has played out. I see very few questioning the ethics of the film itself and the way this almost surely false-flag 'hacking' took place. ::prison::
Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! - Peter Lemkin - 28-12-2014
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Marketing Madness: Americans See Selves as Freedom's Heroes as They Flock to Watch a Lousy Comedy
By Dave Lindorff [/TD][TD="width: 16%"] [/TD]
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By Dave Lindorff
![[Image: Interview-KillMessenger-02014_12_28_11_58_23-0.jpg]](http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/Interview-KillMessenger-02014_12_28_11_58_23-0.jpg)
Randall Park as Kim Jong-un and Jeremy Renner as Gary Webb ( by ThisCantBeHappening!)
Is it just me or does anyone else think like me that this whole uproar over the supposed foreign "threat" to Americans' freedom in the form of warnings against showing a low-brow Hollywood comedy, "The Interview" is a pathetic farce?
It hit bottom for me today when I read in the New York Times that viewers who flocked to one theater to see this over-hyped move kicked it off by collectively pledging Allegiance and singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee."
First of all, let me point out that if the tables had been turned and some other country's film industry had cranked out some movie depicting the assassination of the current president of the United States, does anyone think that the US government would not go ballistic in protest, no doubt threatening trade boycotts or worse -- maybe drone attacks on the studio in question? (Certainly that would be a possibility if the offending nation were Islamic.)
But on top of this, we already know that the initial claim that the threats against theaters showing the film, and the hack of Sony, the film company that made the movie, was wrong, and that they were not the work of the North Korean government, but rather of some private hacking organization. It wouldn't surprise me to someday discover that Sony, stuck with what looked like a dog, paid some shady outfit to hack them and make threats all in order to build "buzz" around the film's release.
Whatever or whoever it was behind the threats against this film, it worked like a charm. Americans, who probably would have ignored this movie like a remake of "Ishtar," have been flocking to it in a jingoistic fervor to watch Kim Jong-un's head explode, even as the US government, which had been threatening retaliation against North Korea, has now had to back away from those threats as it becomes clearer that Pyongyang was not behind them.
What is really sad though, is to see US citizens proudly emptying their wallets for inflated tickets to see this sorry production (which was actually censored in its depiction of the exploding of Korean dictator Kim's head by SONY executives long before North Korea even protested about the film) and crowing that they are "standing tall" against threats to American "freedom of expression."
Where were these supposed heroes of free expression when Washington was pressing the cable companies not to include the English version of Al Jazeera in cable packages? Where were they when we learned, in 2004, that the Bush/Cheney administration had successfully pressured the NY Times to withhold from publishing, from September until after the presidential election, an exclusive article by reporter James Risen that the NSA was massively spying on all Americans -- keeping that issue out of public discourse until Bush was successfully--and narrowly -- re-elected? Where are these ardent defenders of media freedom today as the Federal Communications Commission prepares to approve a merger of Comcast and Time Warner to create on single monopolistic cable company? And where are they as the government sits on a secret indictment of Wikileaks founder Julien Assange, the Australian journalist whose only "crime" is exposing documents proving the corrupt, authoritarian and criminal behavior of the US government. Assange has been trapped for over two years in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London dodging extradition to Sweden on a spurious charge of sex abuse -- a charge which is widely known to be merely a device to get him to Stockholm, where the US prosecutors could get him extradited trial on espionage charges in the US.
The boobs who are flooding theaters to watch Kim's head explode on screen are not defending media freedom. They are participating in just another marketing campaign by a huge media corporation that needed to do something to rescue a dog of a film that it found itself stuck with.
If they really wanted to be freedom's heroes, US filmgoers would be lining up at theaters that are showing the movie "Kill the Messenger," an excellent drama based on a real story. It exposes how the CIA used its contacts and perhaps even paid agents who work inside the largest and supposedly "free and independent" corporate media organizations, to spread lies and destroy the reputation of Gary Webb, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who had exposed an incredibly cynical and criminal program by the CIA in the 1980s to facilitate the massive import into the US of cocaine from Latin America in order to raise money from the drug cartels which it used to fund arms for the Contra army fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
(Such viewers could have even had their exploding head, since Webb, either in an act of despondent suicide after having his career and marriage destroyed, or as a treacherous act of CIA murder, ultimately died of two shots fired into his mouth, the first of which blew away his jaw, and the second of which entered his cranium and killed him.)
Instead, the over-hyped film "The Interview" is now a blockbuster, with theaters packed by jingoistic bozos, while "Kill the Messenger" is relegated to a handful of art houses.
Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! - Magda Hassan - 28-12-2014
Peter Lemkin Wrote:[TABLE="width: 100%"]
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Instead, the over-hyped film "The Interview" is now a blockbuster, with theaters packed by jingoistic bozos, while "Kill the Messenger" is relegated to a handful of art houses.
Useful idiots. Cheerleaders for empire of death.
Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! - Peter Lemkin - 29-12-2014
Magda Hassan Wrote:Peter Lemkin Wrote:[TABLE="width: 100%"]
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[TD="width: 84%"]Marketing Madness: Americans See Selves as Freedom's Heroes as They Flock to Watch a Lousy Comedy[/TD]
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Instead, the over-hyped film "The Interview" is now a blockbuster, with theaters packed by jingoistic bozos, while "Kill the Messenger" is relegated to a handful of art houses.
Useful idiots. Cheerleaders for empire of death.
It's even worse than that....if one knows the words to this song and this pledge - very sick. I heard last night this horrible film [by any standard] has now earned Sony more money than the release of any of their films, ever...in only four days.
Quote:.....viewers who flocked to one theater to see this over-hyped move kicked it off by collectively pledging Allegiance (to the United States of America) and singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee.'
In a 'serious' discussion of this matter on Al Jazeera, one 'expert' posited that N. Korea, after all, was structured as a kind of 'cult' with leadership worship and unquestioned belief in 'country'....I'd perhaps not argue this, but would argue that America is, as well!
Quote:The Pledge of Allegiance(which almost ALL grade school and high school students in America pledge EVERY morning in class with their hand on their heart!)...and woe be to those who refuse [like I did!]
I pledge Allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
with Liberty and Justice for all.
Quote:My country tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died!
Land of the Pilgrim's pride!
From every mountain side,
Let freedom ring!
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love.
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture fills
Like that above.
Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song.
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.
Our father's God to, Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King!
Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! - Magda Hassan - 29-12-2014
:
hock::
Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! - Peter Lemkin - 07-01-2015
The Sony Hack Fraud
A classic case of confirmation bias
by Justin Raimondo, December 31, 2014
The progression of the government's case indicting North Korea for hacking Sony's computer system and revealing the petty ego-trips of Hollywood's glitterrati was succinctly summed up by computer security expert Jeffrey Carr in a pithy tweet:
"NK did it 100%
OK, NK did it w/ help
OK, NK outsourced it
OK, NK was told later and bought them drinks
God dammit, NK is guilty of something"
The idea that Kim Jong-un was so enraged by a "comedy" that dramatizes his assassination and, in the process, underscores the juvenility of its creators was never all that credible to begin with. And the case for pinning the hack on the Hermit Kingdom goes rapidly downhill when one examines the initial communications from the "Guardians of Peace," as the hackers dubbed themselves, which never so much as mentioned "The Interview" and instead simply demanded money. It wasn't until the media and the FBI itself suggested a North Korean connection that the hackers picked up on this diversion and ran with it.
Speaking of diversions: the FBI announced a few days after the hack that they had "conclusive" evidence of North Korea's guilt. The malware, they said, was "similar" to the kind that had been used by suspected North Korean hackers in the past and was "in the Korean language." This is laughable, since a) the malware was widely disseminated and easily obtainable, b) the "Korean language" spoken in the north is significantly different from the southern dialect, and c) anyone who wanted to cover their tracks would be very unlikely to leave these rather transparent "clues."
What other "evidence" do the feds have? Well, it seems the malicious software unleashed on Sony's systems tried to contact an IP address (or addresses) "in North Korea," as the War Street Journal reported. Yet as cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr points out: "There is a common misconception that North Korea's ITC is a closed system [and] therefore anything in or out must be evidence of a government run campaign. In fact, the DPRK has contracts with foreign companies to supply and sustain its networks." Carr goes on to point out that the company that does this for the North Koreans is Loxley Pacific, located in Thailand.
"One of the easiest ways to compromise the Internet backbone of a country is to work for or be a vendor to the company which supplies the backbone. For the DPRK, that's Loxley, based in Bangkok. The geolocation of the first leak of the Sony data on December 2 at 12:25am was traced to the St. Regis hotel in Bangkok, an approximately 13 minute drive from Loxley offices.
"… If one or more of the hackers involved in this attack gained trusted access to Loxley Pacific's network as an employee, a vendor, or simply compromised it as an attacker, they would have unfettered access to launch attacks from the DPRK's network against any target that they wish. Every attack would, of course, point back to the hated Pyongyang government."
In short, the technical "evidence" supporting the narrative woven by those geniuses in Washington is rubbish. Yet they are still sticking by it because, after all, government officials can never admit they were wrong. Especially since the President of the United States went out on a very thin limb and vowed to retaliate against North Korea a pledge apparently carried out a few days ago. Two cyber-attacks took down the Hermit Kingdom's pitiably small Internet structure, which consists of about as many IP addresses as can be found in a single block in Brooklyn.
USA! USA!
There's just one problem: a rising chorus of independent cyber-security professionals are virtually unanimous in the opinion that the Obama administration muffed it. The North Koreans, they say, didn't hack Sony and our "retaliation" is looking more and more like unprovoked aggression. As Carr writes:
"Under international law, the fact that a cyber operation has been routed via the cyber infrastructure located in a State is not sufficient evidence for attributing the operation to that State' (Rule 8, The Tallinn Manual). The White House must responsibly evaluate other options, such as this one, before taking action against another nation state. If it takes such action, and is proved wrong later, which it almost certainly will be, the reputation of the U.S. government and the intelligence agencies which serve it will be harmed."
Eviscerated is more like it.
So, if it wasn't the North Koreans, then who are the hackers and what was their motive? Marc Rogers, principal security researcher at Cloudflare, gave us a clue early on:
"Hard-coded paths and passwords in the malware make it clear that whoever wrote the code had extensive knowledge of Sony's internal architecture and access to key passwords. While it's (just) plausible that a North Korean elite cyber unit could have built up this knowledge over time and then used it to make the malware, Occam's razor suggests the simpler explanation of a pissed-off insider. Combine that with the details of several layoffs that Sony was planning and you don't have to stretch the imagination too far to consider that a disgruntled Sony employee might be at the heart of it all."
It looks like Rogers was right on the money. An independent investigation carried out by Norse Security, a respected Silicon Valley company, came up with what they regard as conclusive evidence as to the identity of at least one of the hackers a ten-year Sony employee with major technical skills who was recently laid off, a woman called "Lena" in news accounts. According to Norse Vice President Kurt Stammberger, the group consists of six people residing in Thailand, Canada, Singapore, and the US. How did Norse arrive at this conclusion? As a writer for Slashdot put it: "
"Rather than starting from the premise that the Sony hack was a state sponsored attack, Norse researchers worked their investigation like any other criminal matter: starting by looking for individuals with the means and motive' to do the attack."
The hackers, it seems, outed themselves when they released that massive data dump, which included files from Sony's human resources department. Last spring Sony fired an awful lot of people and the Norse team traced their virtual footprints. The culprits had an intimate knowledge of the structure of Sony's computer system, and this was therefore the logical place to look. Norse uncovered posts on social media where ex-employees vented their anger at being let go, and uncovered Internet Relay Chat forums where these disgruntled types got in touch with known hackers including one person linked to a server on which the original version of the malware had been constructed in the summer of this year.
The Norse team has met with the FBI and presented their findings, but the feds don't seem too interested. They are sticking by their totally debunked story, at least so far. Just like the neocons who maintain to this day that Saddam Hussein really did have those "weapons of mass destruction" and that we were right to invade Iraq and murder more than half a million Iraqis in cold blood.
Indeed, the Obama administration's absurd "investigation" seems to have been modeled on the Bush administration's propaganda campaign in the run up to the Iraq war, in which every possible bit of pseudo-"evidence" was twisted to conclude that Saddam Hussein was building "weapons of mass destruction." Starting with a preordained conclusion, they proceeded to construct a case based on factoids that seemed to confirm it.
Like the neocons who were desperate for a pretext to invade Iraq, the Obamaites have an agenda of their own: targeting North Korea and citing the alleged threat of a "cybernetic Pearl Harbor" in order to gin up public support for "cyber-security" legislation that would give the government greater power to regulate the Internet as a "public utility." They've been agitating for this for quite a while and clearly see the Sony hack as their doorway to success.
Can the Obama administration "stay the course," as the Bushies used to say, and ignore the rising tide of skepticism? We'll see. I somehow don't think they'll be backing down and offering that apology demanded by Kim Jong-un.
In any case, the lessons of the Sony hack harken back to basic libertarian principles:
1) Never take the government's word for anything they always have an agenda and will make up "facts" to fit the occasion.
2) The private sector is invariably more efficient than the public sector the government's phony investigation was and is bullshit, while it took independent Internet entrepreneurs to uncover the truth.
3) Government-connected companies are just as bad as the government itself as Jeffrey Carr puts it:
"Federal agencies' demand for cyber threat intelligence is voracious and they pay well. That demand is frequently met by companies like Mandiant, now part of FireEye the company handling Sony's incident response. The problem is that these companies have no oversight and no standardized vetting of sources."
I wrote about Mandiant and the great "cyber-war" scam here, but there's another angle not mentioned by Carr: the enormous amount of government money that goes into "cyber-security" is incentive for these companies to tell the feds only what they want to hear. The result is an echo chamber effect that blinds both parties to reality.
Which brings us back to the Iraq model and the causes of the "intelligence failure" that enabled the neocons to lie us into war. The simple fact of the matter is that our rulers aren't interested in the truth because they believe they can create their own reality. As one top Bush administration official told journalist Ron Suskind during the run-up to the war:
"The aide said that guys like me were in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' … That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality judiciously, as you will we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
This is precisely what the "mainstream" media has been doing all throughout this episode: studying the pronouncements of government officials and relaying this new "reality" to the American people with the kind of shameful subservience once only found in totalitarian countries. The result is that even if the government's narrative is definitively debunked, the average person who isn't following this story as closely as the computer experts will continue to believe Sony was hacked by those evil North Koreans, and that we have to take "defensive" measures like bringing down Pyongyang's Internet and empowering the government to regulate the online world. As George W. Bush once put it: Mission accomplished!
Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! - David Guyatt - 14-01-2015
A cynic might ask if this proposed new law resulted from the Sony hack or whether the Sony hack smoothed the way for this proposed new law?
I am not a cynic obviously, so I couldn't possibly comment.
However, I have been waiting patiently to see what, if anything, would transpire from this strange event and wondered and wondered and wondered... Where and how far will this new law go?
Quote:Obama unveils cybersecurity proposals: 'Cyber threats are urgent and growing danger'
Proposed legislation will allow companies to share information with government agencies including NSA, with which White House admitted there were overlapping issues'
- Dan Roberts in Washington
- Follow @RobertsDan Follow @GuardianUS
- theguardian.com, Tuesday 13 January 2015 22.32 GMT
- Jump to comments (131)
Privacy groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation have questioned the proposed legal immunity. Photograph: Aude Guerrucci/EPA
Barack Obama unveiled new cybersecurity measures on Tuesday amid warnings from privacy campaigners about unnecessarily "broad legal immunity" that could put personal information at risk in the wake of attacks like the Sony Pictures hack.
Just one day after the Pentagon's own Twitter account was compromisedand Obama pushed a 30-day window for consumer security breaches, his administration was hoping the proposed legislation would toughen the response of the private sector by allowing companies to share information with government agencies including the NSA, with which the White House admitted there were "overlapping issues".
"I've got a State of the Union next week," Obama said after a Tuesday meeting with Republican leaders at the White House. "One of the things we're going to be talking about is cybersecurity. With the Sony attack that took place, with the Twitter account that was hacked by Islamist jihadist sympathizers yesterday, it just goes to show much more work we need to do both public and private sector to strengthen our cybersecurity."
The administration believes the legislation is necessary partly to give companies legal immunity for sharing information on attacks so that counter-measures can be coordinated, but the White House has stepped back from suggestions that companies should be allowed to individually retaliate against hackers, fearing such encouragement could lead to an escalation of cyber warfare.
On Monday, the Pentagon's own Twitter account was compromised. Photograph: twitter"Cyber threats are an urgent and growing danger," Obama said during a speech in Virginia outlining his proposals on Tuesday. He insisted there was hope for legislation to be passed "soon" a sentiment echoed by Republican leadership after the White House summit.
A White House statement released in advance of the speech said it "encourages the private sector to share appropriate cyber threat information with the Department of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center".
This agency will in turn share real-time information on hacking with other federal agencies and private-sector bodies known as Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (ISAOs) who are being set up to help monitor and disrupt attacks.
However, privacy groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation have questioned the proposed legal immunity, arguing existing rules allow companies to coordinate sufficiently already and challenging a potential provision that could allow the Homeland Security Department to share data in "near real time" with the NSA, FBI and secret service.
Officials insist their proposed information-sharing system would not put privacy at risk as the information disclosed will principally concern the method of attack on computer data and systems, rather than its content.
"We shouldn't allow a disagreement on NSA reforms to impact on the necessity of cybersecurity reforms," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest when asked about the ongoing stalemate over reforming the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance programs in the wake of the Snowden revelations. He said the two should not be confused although acknowledged there were "overlapping issues".
The proposal contains extra powers for law enforcement agencies to target hackers including provisions that would allow for the prosecution of the sale of "botnets", which are programs built to coordinate attacks.
"[It] would criminalize the overseas sale of stolen US financial information like credit card and bank account numbers, would expand federal law enforcement authority to deter the sale of spyware used to stalk or commit ID theft, and would give courts the authority to shut down botnets engaged in distributed denial of service attacks and other criminal activity."
The proposed new cybersecurity bill includes separate protections for consumers and children announced on Monday, which also require companies to notify customers of data breaches and which Obama announced at approximately the same time as the Pentagon Twitter episode.
To become law, the new cybersecurity proposals will also have to win over Republican leaders who met with Obama at the White House to discuss areas of common interest where they can agree on legislation with the president.
After the meeting, Obama cited cybersecurity as one of those areas. "I think we agreed that this is an area where we can work hard together, get some legislation done and make sure that we are much more effective in protecting the American people from these kinds of cyberattacks."
In a statement, the office of House speaker John Boehner said that "Republicans are ready to work with both parties to address this important issue."
Speaking about the proposals at an event at the Department of Homeland Security, Obama conceded that the American people had an interest in making sure the government was not abusing information it got from the private sector and insisted the information sharing rules would come with checks and balances to protect privacy.
"We've got to stay ahead of those who would do us harm," he said. "The problem is that government and the private sector are still not always working as closely together as we should. Sometimes it's still too hard for government to share threat information with companies".
Privacy campaigners were somewhat comforted by administration assurances that information shared with government agencies would be restricted to non-personal data but said it should not be left up to the agencies to decide how this was defined.
"It's good that they are starting to talk about data security but it should be in the bill, not left to officials to decide this is a huge red flag," Mark Jaycox of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told The Guardian.
"It's a very real threat and it's why privacy arguments have won the day so far in Congress."
The symbiosis of business and state continues and grows closer. Will the day arrive when there is no clear space between the two?
Who Would Think To Make A Comedy About Assassinating A Current National Leader?! - Peter Lemkin - 14-01-2015
HuffPo: Ex-Sony Employees Echo Cybersecurity Firm's Suspicion That Hack Was Inside Job
By Dana Liebelson / Huffington Post January 13th, 2015![[Image: James-Franco-Main.jpg?w=307&h=200&crop=1]](http://www.constantinereport.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/James-Franco-Main.jpg?w=307&h=200&crop=1)
WASHINGTON A Silicon Valley cybersecurity firm is doubling down on its claim that at least one former Sony employee was involved in hacking Sony. Some former employees of the company are expressing that sentiment as well, even as the U.S. government stands by its conclusion that North Korea orchestrated the massive cyberattack.
Kurt Stammberger, senior vice president at Norse, which provides cyber intelligence to customers in financial services, technology and government, told The Huffington Post that the company remains "pretty confident" that "at least one ex-employee was involved, probably more" in the Sony hack.As evidence, Stammberger said that Norse has samples of malware used in the Sony hack that existed as early as July, "completely in English with no Korean whatsoever." Sony credentials, server addresses and digital certificates were already built into the malware, he added.
"It's virtually impossible to get that information unless you are an insider, were an insider, or have been working with an insider," he said. "That's why we and so many other security professionals are convinced an insider played an important role."
The information doesn't discount the fact that North Korea "definitely benefitted from this hack," Stammberger said. However, he added, "There's no credible evidence that [North Korea] initiated, directed, masterminded or funded this attack."
Norse's research underscores the mysteriousness surrounding the hack an event that rattled that studio, almost derailed a movie's release and sharpened U.S. policy against one of its main adversaries.
Last month, the FBI announced that North Korea was solely responsible for the cyberattack. President Barack Obama was confident enough in the attribution last week to slap North Korean officials and companies with economic sanctions. Senior administration officials said on a recent conference call with reporters that cybersecurity firms "don't have the same access" to intelligence that the government does, and quelled concerns by noting that it is "extremely rare for the U.S. government to take this step" of implementing sanctions in response to a cyberattack.
Debate over the identity of the attack's perpetrators has split the cybersecurity community, with some experts remaining doubtful about the scant information the FBI has released. The skepticism reached a fever pitch when the FBI briefly met with Norse late last month to discuss the firm's findings. Following that meeting, a U.S. official familiar with the matter told Politico that the company's analysis "did not improve the knowledge of the investigation." A source who had been briefed on the FBI's investigation also told Politico that the agency had considered the inside job theory, but there wasn't sufficient evidence.
Other cybersecurity researchers have questioned Norse as well. Andrew Komarov, the CEO of IntelCrawler, a cyber threat intelligence company, said, "This attack can be done absolutely remotely, and we don't think any insiders played [a] role in it."
Marc Rogers, head of security at Defcon, a hacker conference, took a slightly different view. "I have the same problems with Norse's claims that I do with the FBI's. Their evidence is extremely thin," he told HuffPost. Rogers pointed out that another scenario that meets all of Norse's evidence could be an attacker who breaks in and spends time exploring the Sony network, using the company's own computers to compile the malware.
"I agree with them that an insider is the likely scenario given the amount of Sony-specific information used in carrying out the attack and the complexity of the attack, but there isn't enough information to conclusively say who did it," he said.
Like Norse claims, some former employees of the company think that there may have been inside help potentially, as Norse has speculated, a disgruntled employee who was hit by mass Sony layoffs last spring.
A former Sony executive, who wished to remain anonymous to protect his relationship with the company, told HuffPost that about 100 former employees in a private Facebook group participated in an informal survey about the hack in December. "By a vast majority, former employees believe it was an inside job," he said.
The Sony executive, who does not have internal knowledge of the company or FBI's investigations into the hack, said that it's "possible that a former employee was involved," but said he believed "this wasn't a one-person job." He added, "Whether it was North Korea, or a hacker group, or an individual from Sony Pictures, these are not mutually exclusive."
Another former Sony employee, who wished to stay anonymous because he doesn't want to compromise his planned participation in a class-action lawsuit over the leaked information, said, "If you were a full-time employee, the security they had in place wasn't exactly tight. You could imagine somebody could have walked out of there with data."
The former employee, who also does not have any direct knowledge of investigations into the hack, added that in his division, "there's dozens of people who are very, very pissed off at the company. … That somebody could have been pissed enough to do this? Yeah, absolutely, I think it's possible."
Both Sony and the FBI declined to comment about the status of any investigation into the hack. The FBI referred HuffPost to previous statements it has made on the hack.
Stammberger, the Norse executive, could not comment on whether the company plans to have any further meetings with the FBI regarding Sony. The firm has turned all of its data over to the FBI, and the investigation is now with them.
"Norse in its everyday business operations routinely meets with state and federal law enforcement officials, because of the type of work that it does, and there's no reason to believe those meetings won't continue in the future," he said.