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The US hacked North Korea first

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 20 Jan 2015, 11:47am

The US hacked North Korea first

 Ever since the Korean war, North Korea has always viewed the US with hostility.

Last year, Sony Pictures was hacked. They got their upcoming movies leaked, as well as tons of other sensitive data like employee info to corporate emails. All because of a movie called 'The Interview', Fingers were pointed and threats made, which eventually led the US government into getting involved. Investigations into the hacks revealed a ton of information about the hack, though very little concrete evidence on who was behind it. Sure, the US government blamed North Korea, with the FBI backing up the government's claims but there really wasn't anything concrete revealed. As expected, North Korea denied involvement and everybody thought that was it.

It turns out there's at least one more part that's to be played. The US has recently revealed that it knew it was North Korea behind the hacks. How? They had hacked the Koreans first (in 2010) and planted 'beacons' to trigger in case the country tried a massive cyber attack against US interests or engaged in suspicious activity. Interestingly, while those beacons did trigger, the US initially didn't act on their intelligence as the initial attacks on Sony were deemed to be normal phishing and wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

The New York Times has an article up that talks about the events and more. It's a fascinating read but it raises a very interesting question in our minds. Why did the US reveal they hacked North Korea in the first place? Unless, their assets were completely burned or turned, we'd think keeping quiet and letting the matter rest would've been a better alternative. They could have continued to use their malware for continued insight into North Korea's actions.

Still, now that the cat's out of the bag, we wonder what the North Koreans will do now that they know that their internet's been infiltrated?

Source: New York Times

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