Cyber Warfare, the Future of the Internet

[Grok]

The Sony affair appears to be the opening salvo of cyber warfare. It has been generally assumed that the target will be either military, or infrastructure. In this case the target seems to be freedom of speech.

[crfriend]

The "Sony affair" is just one more bump in the road, and reflects very little on the overall status and state of the global network known as the Internet.

I suspect that there is vastly more to the story than Sony are telling us, and I see four distinct possibilities:

• That it is as Sony are telling us, and the North Korean government hacked them in response to the film
• That the North Koreans hired somebody to do the hacking
• That the film simply sucked and Sony are playing this up for PR
• That Sony got hacked for cause other than the film, and Sony are using that to make hay

All 4 are believable, and all 4 are possible. We will likely never know which is which. Personally, I lean toward the latter three.

Why? Given Sony's history of (ab)using computing technology -- specifically the "rootkit case" from a few years ago -- Sony have a very bad name in the computing world, and I'm surprised they're still in business. I know that I haven't touched anything Sony for years in light of their illegal and unethical behavior, and shame on anybody who has. Top executives should have gone to jail over that. Also, Sony's electronic defenses are weak; this is typical of firms where profits come first and ethics dead last and sets the stage for all sorts of problems. So a crack from a dedicated team, even in the US, is a possibility -- which is something Sony would not want to admit to directly, but can profit from in other ways.

I've not seen the film, and won't on ethical grounds (see above). However, there has been some scuttlebutt floating about that the thing made Ishtar look like a Cecil B. DeMille blockbuster and would have gone down in flames and derision after a one-night run. It might have been best for Sony to swallow the loss for a little bit and release the thing direct-to-DVD in several months' time and cash in on all the publicity that's swirling now.

It is possible, but unlikely, that the North Koreans did this by their own hand. Whilst the leadership is entirely rational and sane -- and therefore reasonably predictable -- in its behavior, they lack very good access to the 'Net, and most stuff is fairly easily traceable if one has proper defenses in place (see above). I'm not ruling this one out, but it's at the bottom of my probability tree.

That leaves "hired thugs". There are a lot of those in the world, and those will do anybody's bidding so long as the price is right. These are the types who run botnets that bring us so much grief and who governments are reticent to bring to justice despite the financial damage that they do (although it's mostly to "little people). This is at the top of my probability tree.

The 'Net is fine, and is behaving the way it should. Sony got cracked because (1) it could and (2) it needed it; recall that Sony cracked millions of computers by installing a rootkit on them several years back, and the damage done by that has likely still not healed. Ya lives by the sword, ya dies by the sword. Or, in this case, code.