Further Evidence Pointing to North Korea as Sony Hacker
The FBI has provided more evidence:
Speaking at a Fordham Law School cybersecurity conference Wednesday, Comey said that he has “very high confidence” in the FBI’s attribution of the attack to North Korea. And he named several of the sources of his evidence, including a “behavioral analysis unit” of FBI experts trained to psychologically analyze foes based on their writings and actions. He also said that the FBI compared the Sony attack with their own “red team” simulations to determine how the attack could have occurred. And perhaps most importantly, Comey now says that the hackers in the attack failed on multiple occasions to use the proxy servers that bounce their Internet connection through an obfuscating computer somewhere else in the world, revealing IP addresses that tied them to North Koreans.
“In nearly every case, [the Sony hackers known as the Guardians of Peace] used proxy servers to disguise where they were coming from in sending these emails and posting these statements. But several times they got sloppy,” Comey said. “Several times, either because they forgot or because of a technical problem, they connected directly and we could see that the IPs they were using…were exclusively used by the North Koreans.”
“They shut it off very quickly once they saw the mistake,” he added. “But not before we saw where it was coming from.”
Here’s the full text of the FBI director’s remarks. More news stories. Commentary from Just Security. Slashdot thread. Hacker News thread.
EDITED TO ADD (1/10): Marc Rogers responds. Here’s a piece:
First, they are saying that these guys, who so were careful to route themselves through multiple public proxies in order to hide their connections, got sloppy and connected directly. It’s a rookie mistake that every hacker dreads. Many of us “hackers” even set up our systems to make this sort of slip-up impossible. So, while its definitely plausible, it feels very unlikely for professional or state-sponsored hackers in my books. Hackers who take this much care when hiding their connections have usually developed a methodology based around using these kinds of connections to hide their origin. It becomes such common practice that it’s almost a reflex. Why? Because their freedom depends on it.
However, even if we take that to one side and accept that these emails came from North Korean IP addresses, what are those addresses? If they are addresses in the North Korean IP ranges then why don’t they share them? If they are North Korean servers, then say so! What about the possibility that this attacker who has shown ability and willingness to bounce their connections all over the world is simply bouncing their messages off of North Korean infrastructure?
Finally, how do they even know these emails came from the attackers? From what I saw, the messages with actual incriminating content were dumped to pastebin and not sent via email. Perhaps there are messages with incriminating content—and by this I mean links to things only the attackers had access to—which they haven’t shared with us? Because from where I am sitting, it’s highly possible that someone other than the attacker could have joined in the fun by sending threatening messages as GOP, as we have already seen happen once in this case.
EDITED TO ADD (1/12): The NSA admits involvement.
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mb • January 9, 2015 7:06 AM
Why couldn’t the “Guardians of Peace” use a proxy in North Korea to cast suspicion on the North Koreans? That would seem easy enough.