14 DAY TRIAL // President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order on Friday, authorizing sanctions against the government of North Korea as a result of the cyber incident affecting Sony Pictures Entertainment on November 24.
The order was signed on Friday and is designed to increase the financial pressure on North Korea by applying targeted sanctions on agencies and controlled entities, as well as certain individuals, who are no longer allowed access to the US financial system.
This also means that US citizens are denied engaging in dealings and financial transactions involving the named North Korean citizens.
Sony hack at the root of the political decision
An investigation from the FBI determined that the government at Pyongyang was responsible for the intrusion, as a result of the movie studio’s plans to release “The Interview,” a comedy about the assassination of Kim Jong-un, at the command of the CIA.
The document is aimed at three entities controlled by Pyongyang, two arms organizations (Reconnaissance General Bureau - RGB and Korea Tangun Trading Corporation) and one intelligence agency (Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation - KOMID).
The sanctions, carried out through the US Treasury, also apply to ten individuals, officials of the North Korean government.
The executive order is motivated by “provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies of the Government of North Korea, including its destructive, coercive cyber-related actions during November and December 2014.”
To make matters more clear, an official statement from the US Treasury on Friday said that the cyber-attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) was the determining factor for the signing of the order.
Cyber incident leading to sanctions
On November 24, hackers going by the name Guardians of Peace (GoP) deployed an attack against the computers of SPE, wiping all the data available on their storage devices, but not before exfiltrating sensitive business information.
GoP is believed to have acted with support from North Korea, particularly to prevent the launch of the movie. However, in the initial communication to Sony, the hackers demanded monetary compensation in return to keeping the stolen information private.
Later messages did ask Sony to bury the movie, and even terrorist threats were made, should this not happen. The company did release the comedy, though, after initially pulling it, as the Department of Homeland Security said that it had no intelligence to deem the threats credible.
It must be noted that the FBI’s attribution of the attack is not shared by all security experts, as many of them consider that it is difficult to determine the party behind such an incident because hackers oftentimes place fake clues as far as their identity is concerned, specifically to throw investigators off their scent.
The US sanctions against North Korea have not received a response yet, but it is likely to fuel Pyongyang’s hatred towards Washington.