The Cyber War is one serious Business

"The Interview" by Sony Studio

The decision by the Sony Corporation not to show the most anticipated comedy of 2014, 'The Interview', is a huge victory for cyber hackers working on behalf of Communist regime in North Korea. The comedy is, as movie analyst stated, extremely funny, but in it, the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, is assassinated - his head blown off. Recently, hackers purported to be from North Korea, hacked into the Sony computer servers and stole private sensitive data of the company's top executives, company employees and subscribers. The question is, how did they do it, and for a nation considered backward technologically, why was it possible for them to breach Sony Corporation fire-wall.

Theories

Since Sony hackers released some information online about the corporation, the warnings turned out to be real and not just some silly cyber pranksters. Experts here in US are trying to unearth how exactly did the North Korean hackers able to penetrate the company's computer firewall. A few theories have emerged, but authorities have pin-pointed two plausible causes:

1. The Malware used to penetrate the Sony computer server's firewall is extremely sophisticated and may not originate from North Korea. Cyber experts believe that either China or Russia had their hands in this dirty work. This is crucial because China, Russia and North Korea are partners in most international issues; particularly those that deal with government and the West. 

2. An inside Job. It is highly likely that the data may have been breached using unconventional hacking techniques. Other than applying "brute-force" on the server's firewall, the hackers may have found their way passed the wall by either getting login information from workers inside Sony, or some spies may have their hands on someone with higher authority in the corporations by stealing their identities and using them to login into the company's most sensitive sectors inside the server. 

Reliability of the Claims

The first assumption can only be verified by cyber experts in the FBI or other government agencies such as the CIA or NSA. News outlets in USA reported that information gathered showed some hacking activities done from outside of North Korea. The analysts suggested that the only two governments capable of using such Malware are the Russian and Chinese communist governments. The investigation in still on behind closed doors, but it is highly likely that more evidence will surface after Christmas as to where the source of the hacking is. As of now, sources close to the investigation suggested that Korea had help in attacking US servers.

Just yesterday, Russian boss Vladimir Putin, held a long press conference in which he attacked the US and the west of messing with Russia. He suggested that Russia cannot be tossed around by the west. Few months ago, US president Barrack Obama launched a series of targeted sanctions against Russian oligarchs as punishment for Russian annexation of Crimea, a territory of Ukraine, and also funded and armed resistant fighters in the Eastern territories, causing so much instabilities in Ukraine. Though NATO has no official treaty with Ukraine, countries bordering Ukraine are members of the NATO alliance, making NATO quite unease with Russia's illegal activities in the region. The sanction hurts Russia in a big way. 

Contributing to the gradual decline in the Russian economy is the fallen prices of gas and oil. Around the world, the costs of gas and oil fell dramatically, reducing the West's dependency on Russian's oil. In the last few months, gas/oil production in US spiked dramatically which eased up Russian's monopoly on gas throughout Europe. Cheaper gas price means lower demands for Russian gas. For a country that depends almost entirely on gas production and Western cash, a drop in the price of gas across the globe is no goodness for the Russian market and economy. 

Besides Russia, experts point to China. While no clear evidence to show that the China explicitly involved in this hacking attack on a huge US corporation, China's reputation on hacking makes this claim a highly credible one. In past few years, Chinese hacking activities on US network infrastructure were detected by cyber security experts. Chinese hackers have attempted to penetrate Intelligence Community computers and military servers. Thus, any hacking attempt on a huge corporation computer servers cannot be attributed to small-time hackers and rogue Internet voyeurs. It must be originated from the "know-how" communities run by government's espionage teams trained to penetrate even the most secured computers. China and Russia certainly fit the attributions or characteristics of the hackers.

The second explanation is another plausible one because it's been done regularly by rogue computer programmers. Just recently a hacker bragged about penetrating celebrities cloud accounts where personal photos are stored. The iCloud server belongs to Apple Corporation. He posted nude photos of very popular Holly Wood actresses include Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lawrence, and many other actresses from all over the world. In response to the criticism by celebrities and their lawyers, Apple explained the hacking was done not on their servers but the local computers of each celebrities. If this is the case, celebrities and their lawyers don't have a cases against Apple for not protecting their files. 

How did they Do it?

Gaining access to a protected serve through the normal login process is all about "credentials". Since computer servers don't have eyes to see who the rightful owner of an account is, it relies merely on the 'credentials' of the user. Computer login programs depend entirely on "matching information". Thus, it is easy to sneak into a secured server using the normal login information, which can only happen if NK spies managed to get data from executives of the corporation. But again, this is a theory. 

News report today point to China and Russia as perhaps aiding in attacking Sony servers. Whatever the truth is, Sony executives do not know exactly what private data the hackers have in their possession. To appease these hackers in a hope of preventing more private embarrassing emails, Sony decided to cancel the showing of "The Interview" nationwide.

Data released by these hackers have shaken the core of the Sony Corporation. Emails and other private conversations between top executives show top execs making fun of actors, belittle blacks, and actors with right leaning political views such as Angelina Joli. These revelation of private data also leads to race-hustlers such as Al Sharpton going after Sony corporations for racial discrimination and personal attack on black leaders. 

I expect more local aftershocks even after the hacking saga settled. The racial implications, the gossiping and backstabbing exhibited in these private data mean that Holly Wood will not be the same. This hacking may have a far reaching impact on Holly Wood than initially thought.