Obama administration: North Koreans probably not responsible for Sony Hack, but hey, let's sanction them anyway

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Seems like (again) a pretty misleading headline. The way I read it, the 10 officials sanctioned might not have had direct involvement, but the US is still saying NK was responsible. It’s pretty common to target individuals with sanctions for actions of the government of which they are officials. Still, maybe no evidence presented from the FBI at this point, but there’s no retraction yet AFAIK.

Edit: maybe I was too soft in my original post. This is headline is downright deceptive and irresponsible. The NYT says “The Obama administration doubled down on Friday on its allegation that North Korea’s leadership was behind the hacking of Sony Pictures as it announced new sanctions” - that’s the first line of the cited article. And yes a security firm of unknown (to me, anyway) reputation says that according to their evidence, it was Sony ex-employees. But again, they don’t have access to the evidence that the FBI does.

I don’t stand for lies by BoingBoing any more than I would stand for lies by the government. Retract the headline, @xeni.

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Oh sure. First we shouldn’t trust the government. What’s next, voting politicians into office that care about doing the right thing? We are lucky we don’t get our internets taken away, spreading nasty rumors like this.

Why don’t we all just relax and rewatch the last season of Dancing With the Stars.

/shrug. works for me.

That title isn’t merely misleading, its just plan not factual. The US govt has not said NK probably didn’t do it. I guess if you said “THESE North Koreans…”

Even if NK didn’t do it, they claimed responsibility. The research that implicates Russia is pursuasive, but not damning. In my book, if you claim responsibility, you ought to get beat up a little.

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Being bastards usually gets them attention, so why not?

Wait… North Korea claimed responsibility? This is news to me I’m surprised I didn’t see it all over the news. I’ve only seen a lot of “probably” and “most likely” arguments about their hand in this.

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Fantastic. Obama’s gone all the way into the “I’m the Decider, and it’s better to be decisive than right!” bullshit that we all know works so well. I can’t imagine this going badly at all.

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I seem to recall DPRK praising the hackers, but not claiming them as their own. Do you have links to news sources that indicate that the DPRK is now claiming to have hacked Sony?

I agree that this headline is a fabrication. The gov’t has not said that North Koreans are probably not responsible for the Sony hack. That is a made up quote that is 100% untrue. Not what I’m used to from Boing Boing.

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Okay so they were equivocal.

The headline is every bit as true as government claims that North Korea has been identified as the hackers that did this.

If the headline is true, please provide a source that shows the Obama administration saying, “North Koreans are probably not responsible for the Sony Hack.”

I’m not finding the quoted text in the linked article at all. Here it is: More Sanctions on North Korea After Sony Case - The New York Times . I see that same quote at Vox, Slate, and a few others. Did NYT change the article?

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I suppose it did

But in briefings for reporters, officials said they could not establish that any of the 10 officials had been directly involved in the destruction of much of the studio’s computing infrastructure.

Not a material change, in my opinion.

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