James Comey to speak at international security conference

Jan 7, 2015 12:34 GMT  ·  By

FBI director James Comey is on the list of speakers at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University, where he is expected to provide more details about the clues that led the agency to attributing the Sony hack to the North Korean government.

Sony Pictures Entertainment was attacked on November 24, 2014 with a piece of malware that deleted all the information on its computers, but not before hackers extracted large amounts of data.

Cyber-security experts could have an answer from the FBI

The files were then used to blackmail Sony for what is now believed to be the release of the comedy movie “The Interview,” where two reporters are tasked by the CIA with assassinating the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.

An official statement from the FBI on December 19, following investigation of the incident, informed that the agency determined that North Korea was behind the Sony hack, despite many security experts being vocal about the difficulty of attribution in case of a sophisticated cyber-attack.

According to sources interviewed by The Intercept, Comey may respond to the criticism from cyber-security experts regarding the conclusion of the Bureau.

In a Joint Intelligence Bulletin (JIB) from the FBI, dated December 24 and marked U//FOUO (unclassified, for official use only), a warning was issued that the Guardians of Peace (GoP) also threatened an American news organization. GoP is the group of hackers claiming responsibility for the attack on Sony.

Misunderstood joke on Pastebin taken seriously by the FBI

However, the JIB referred to a message on Pastebin, an anonymous publishing platform, that made a threat, with no specific consequence having been mentioned, to CNN for the quality of their investigation of the Sony incident.

The publishing of the message was claimed by David Garret, a writer from Knoxville, who admitted publicly that it was meant only as a way to draw attention to the fact that news outlets should not rely on anonymous sources.

He told Matthew Keys on Twitter that he was the author of the post and that it was a misunderstood joke. The FBI took the claim seriously, though.

“The result of the investigation by CNN is so excellent that you might have seen what we were doing with your own eyes,” the message read, adding “P.S.You have 24 hours to give us the wolf,” referring to Wolf Blitzer, a journalist for the CNN.

“Maybe in this day and age we should be more vigilant, but come on, asking someone to hand over Wolf Blitzer is clearly a joke,” Garret told The Intercept.