US Official Names The North Korean General Who May Have Ordered The Sony Hack

[KimJongUn]

US Official Names The North Korean General Who May Have Ordered The Sony Hack

James Cook
Jan. 7, 2015, 4:35 PM

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper

US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said at a cybersecurity conference that he suspects his North Korean counterpart to be behind the hack of Sony Pictures.

The Daily Beast reports that Clapper said during his talk at the International Conference on Cybersecurity that General Kim Youn Chol may have been behind the hack.

Clapper explained that if North Korea was behind the hack, then General Kim would have had to authorise the action.

General Kim is a four-star general in charge of North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, the organisation that Clapper claims is responsible for the Sony hack.

The speech also detailed Clapper's 2014 trip to North Korea, where he arranged the release of two prisoners. He claimed that during his dinner with General Kim, things got so heated that the two men were jabbing their fingers into each other's chests.

 

[KimJongUn]

FBI Director: This Is How We Know North Korea Hacked Sony

James Cook
Jan. 7, 2015, 5:45 PM

FBI Director James Comey

The Director of the FBI, James Comey, revealed in a speech today how the US government managed to tie the hack of Sony Pictures to North Korea.

Speaking at the International Conference on Security, Comey explained how investigators at the FBI uncovered who was behind the cyberattack.

Comey told the conference that the hackers "got sloppy," accidentally revealing their real IP addresses in the emails they sent to Sony Pictures executives. He explained that the IP addresses are "exclusively used by the North Koreans."

Hackers use technology like VPN servives to try and hide their IP addresses, which tie internet users to real-world locations. By using VPNs, they can mask where in the world they really are. Comey claims that Guardians of Peace used VPNs to try and hide their real identities, but they slipped up.

Elsewhere in his speech, Comey addressed the many cybersecurity experts who have cast doubt on the FBI's claim that North Korea was behind the hack. "Some serious folks suggested we have it wrong," he said. "They don't have the facts that I have, they don't see what I see." He went on to say that "there's not much I have high confidence about - I have very high confidence in this attribution."