U.S. suspects North Korea had help attacking Sony Pictures: source

U.S. investigators believe that North Korea likely hired hackers from outside the country to help with last month’s massive cyberattack against Sony Pictures, an official close to the investigation said on Monday. As North Korea lacks the capability to conduct some elements of the sophisticated campaign by itself, the official said, U.S. investigators are looking at the possibility that Pyongyang “contracted out” some of the cyber work. The official was not authorized to speak on the record about the investigation. The attack on Sony Pictures is considered the most destructive against a company on U.S. soil because the hackers not only stole huge quantities of data, but also wiped hard drives and brought down much of the studio’s network for more than a week.

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.

A statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation

While U.S. officials investigate whether North Korea enlisted help from outside contractors, the FBI stood by its previous statement that Pyongyang was the prime author of the attack against the Sony Corp unit. The people who claimed responsibility for the hack have said on Internet postings that they were incensed by the Sony Pictures film “The Interview,” a comedy about a fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea denied that it was behind the Sony attack and vowed to hit back against any U.S. retaliation. Meanwhile, some private security experts have begun to question whether Pyongyang was behind the Sony cyberattack at all.

I think the government acted prematurely in announcing unequivocally that it was North Korea before the investigation was complete. There are many theories about who did it and how they did it. The government has to be pursuing all of them.

Mark Rasch, a former federal cybercrimes prosecutor

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