For a couple of months now, the North Korean government was lambasted for allegedly hacking the computer data from Sony Entertainment because of its scheduled release of “The Interview.” However, it is now being learned that the United States government had infiltrated the oppressive North Korean government four years prior to the international incident.
Newly discovered National Security Agency (NSA) documents show that the federal organization seeped into Chinese and Malaysian networks that connected to Pyongyang to the rest of the world in 2010.
The report, which was first discovered by the New York Times over the weekend, highlighted the fact that the U.S. utilized many of the same networks from four years prior to provide evidence that Kim Jong-un’s hackers were behind the security vulnerabilities of Sony’s email system.
American investigators found out that the hackers spent two months compiling the best methods to attack Sony’s computer systems. When the story first broke, there were some critics of the Obama administration who questioned why the U.S. knew right away it was North Korea – these newly released documents now offer evidence to this immediate conclusion.
Many are now pondering as to why the White House didn’t warn Sony about the potential ramifications and what North Korea was up to before the headline-generating news story. It has been noted that the intelligence agencies “couldn’t really understand the severity” of the biggest cyberattack in U.S. corporate history.
“The speed and certainty with which the United States made its determinations about North Korea told you that something was different here,” James A. Lewis, a cyber warfare expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told the New York Times. “[The U.S.] had some kind of inside view.
Sony decided to cancel any screenings of “The Interview” over threats of a 9/11-style attack on domestic movie theaters. However, the company decided to release the film on YouTube and in select movie houses. This led to the movie having the biggest film debut on the Internet.