N.S.A. Tapped Into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say
Source: New York Times
The trail that led American officials to blame North Korea for the destructive cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in November winds back to 2010, when the National Security Agency scrambled to break into the well-guarded computer systems of a country considered one of the most impenetrable targets on earth.
Spurred by growing concern about North Koreas maturing capabilities, the American spy agency drilled into the Chinese networks that connect North Korea to the outside world, picked through connections in Malaysia favored by North Korean hackers and penetrated directly into the North with the help of South Korea and other American allies, according to former United States and foreign officials, computer experts later briefed on the operations and a newly disclosed N.S.A. document.
A classified security agency program expanded into an ambitious effort, officials said, to place malware that could track the internal workings of computers and networks used by the Norths hackers.
The evidence gathered by the early warning radar of software painstakingly hidden to monitor North Koreas activities proved critical in persuading President Obama to accuse the government of Kim Jong-un of ordering the Sony attack, according to the officials and experts. But fearing the exposure of its methods in a country that remains a black hole for intelligence gathering, American officials have declined to talk publicly about the role the technology played in Washingtons assessment that the North Korean government had ordered the attack on Sony.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/world/asia/nsa-tapped-into-north-korean-networks-before-sony-attack-officials-say.html?emc=edit_na_20150118
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Xilantro
(41 posts)You have the timeline backward.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)but they did nothing to stop them because the didn't understand what they were seeing?
We're spending billions on this program why?
Gman
(24,780 posts)It's tracking malware. Probably monitors many connections and bounces. The data is probably analyzed later.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Learn from others.
PSPS
(13,614 posts)Whether they installed spyware in NK or not, it doesn't justify the claim that "North Korea hacked Sony." How would they not notice "many terabytes of data" during what would have been its months-long travel over the internet? Why was the initial demand, made long before the movie was released, only for money?
This looks like just another one of those planted stories, complete with misleading headline and intentionally misleading innuendo.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)I would hope for all the money we're spending the NSA has taps in the networks of every other country on earth.