14 DAY TRIAL // The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains its initial statement about the North Korean government being involved in the attack against Sony, while US investigators say that help from outside the country could have been contracted for the hacking activity.
At the moment, it is unclear what made the investigators chase this lead, although many voices in the security industry say that North Korea is not likely to be the culprit.
Pyongyang lacks the capacity to run such an attack
In the initial declaration, the FBI said that it could not disclose all the evidence pointing to North Korea as the attacker in order to protect sensitive sources.
However, according to Reuters, an official close to the inquiry says that the Pyongyang does not have the necessary resources to orchestrate an attack reaching the level of sophistication seen in the Sony Pictures Entertainment incident. As such, the possibility of contract work is currently looked into.
The identity of the source remains undisclosed because they were not authorized to talk about the recent course of events.
Norse, a company that offers early-warning solutions for companies to prevent cyber-attacks, said that the result of their separate investigation into the incident was that the Sony hack was conducted with the help of a disgruntled employee who had been laid off back in May.
According to its findings, there are six individuals involved in the hack directly, three of them being from Canada, Singapore and Thailand.
“The FBI has concluded the Government of North Korea is responsible for the theft and destruction of data on the network of Sony Pictures Entertainment,” the Bureau told Reuters.
Monetary compensation was demanded at first
Worth noting is that the hackers’ motivation seemed purely financial in the initial communication to Sony, but as soon as the media speculated a North Korean attempt to stop the movie studio from releasing the comedy “The Interview,” they aligned their demands to match this purpose.
Sony ended up releasing the movie to cinemas in the US on Christmas day, as per their schedule, as well as through online services, media reporting earnings of $18 / €14.800 million in the opening weekend. $2.8 / €2.29 million came from indie theaters, while $15 / €12.3 million came from online distribution, mostly through YouTube and Google Play.
Finding the real culprits is not an easy job, considering that sophisticated attacks are conducted through multiple machines in order to hide the machine it originates from. This kind of visibility is available only to a few entities, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and government agencies.