Free Republic

North Korea called President Barack Obama “a monkey” and blamed the U.S. on Saturday for shutting down its Internet amid the hacking row over the comedy “The Interview.” North Korea has denied involvement in a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures but has expressed fury over the comedy depicting an assassination of its leader Kim Jong Un. […] “Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” an unidentified spokesman at the commission’s Policy Department said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. It wasn’t the first time North Korea has...

A number of private security researchers are increasingly voicing doubts that the hack of Sony‘s computer systems was the work of North Korea. President Obama and the F.B.I. last week accused North Korea of targeting Sony and pledged a “proportional response” just hours before North Korea’s Internet went dark without explanation. But security researchers remain skeptical, with some even likening the government’s claims to those of the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war. Fueling their suspicions is the fact that the government based its findings, in large part, on evidence that it will not release, citing the...

North Korea may be facing explosive hacking accusations, but analysts are questioning how an isolated, impoverished country with limited Internet access could wage cyber sabotage -- and many experts believe China plays a role. The US has accused Pyongyang of hacking Sony Pictures, which was intimidated into initially cancelling the comedy film "The Interview" that mocks North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, before deciding to release it online and in selected US cinemas on Christmas Day. While much of the focus has been on the so-called cyber warfare between Washington and Pyongyang -- especially after North Korea's Internet temporarily went down...

The FBI and the President may claim that the Hermit Kingdom is to blame for the most high-profile network breach in forever. But almost all signs point in another direction. So, “The Interview” is to be released after all. The news that the satirical movie—which revolves around a plot to murder Kim Jong-Un—will have a Christmas Day release as planned, will prompt renewed scrutiny of whether, as the US authorities have officially claimed, the cyber attack on Sony really was the work of an elite group of North Korean government hackers. All the evidence leads me to believe that the...

North Korea: No ‘physical reaction’ to new film By Associated Press December 24 at 5:21 PM UNITED NATIONS — North Korea says it likely will have no “physical reaction,” just condemnation, to the release of the comedy film “The Interview,” which depicts the assassination of leader Kim Jong Un. A North Korea diplomat to the United Nations told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his country opposes the film’s release online and in over 300 U.S. theaters this week.

Deadline looms as hackers threaten to destroy control systems of nuclear facilities Updated: 2014-12-24 20:35:49 KST The investigation team is closing in on the hacker who is threatening to release thousands of nuclear reactor data. Authorities say they have traced the attack to multiple IP addresses in Shenyang, China. They haven't ruled out North Korea's involvement since the city is close to the border. Authorities believe the attack was planned for two years, and that more than one person is responsible. They had discovered earlier in the week that the Twitter ID being used by the hacker was registered in...

North Korea Internet hit by 2 more outages Doug Stanglin and Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY 2:07 p.m. EST December 23, 2014 North Korea's Internet service, which was out for almost 10 hours on Monday, went down two more times on Tuesday, including a 31-minute stretch, according to Dyn Research. The Manchester, N.H., company that tracks internet traffic and performance said "connectivity problems continue." The initial instability emerged Sunday followed by the full shutdown for nine and and a half hours on Monday. The two outages onTuesday included one that lasted from10:41 a.m. ET to 11:12 a.m.ET.

<p>Aristotle thought courage the preeminent virtue. Without it, there could be no morality. Virtue becomes a mere abstraction, a high-sounding platitude that is easy to live by in one’s sleep.</p> <p>The present generation may be the most abjectly cowardly cohort in memory. When the Sony Corporation was victimized by North Korean–sponsored hackers upset over Sony’s new movie The Interview, it caved and withdrew the film. The Obama administration so far has offered no real support. Instead it blamed Sony for its appeasement. By joint inaction both Sony and the United States government sent the message that foreign dictators can determine what Americans see or read, as long as their targets are private citizens.</p>

North Korea's Internet still spotty By Dana Ford, CNN December 23, 2014 -- Updated 1037 GMT (1837 HKT) (CNN) -- [Breaking news update, posed at 535 a.m. ET] Internet service in North Korea is still intermittent, Dyn Research, a company that monitors Internet performance, announced on Twitter Tuesday morning. Service went down completely for about nine hours earlier, Dyn Research said.

North Korea's Internet back up after disruption By Dana Ford, CNN December 23, 2014 -- Updated 0246 GMT (1046 HKT) (CNN) -- North Korea's Internet was back up Tuesday after a more than nine-hour outage, according to Dyn Research, a company that monitors Internet performance. The disruption came amid an escalating war of words between the United States and North Korea over a massive cyberattack on Sony Pictures. "Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn't be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently," Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, said...

North Korea’s already tenuous links to the Internet went completely dark on Monday after days of instability, in what Internet monitors described as one of the worst North Korean network failures in years. The loss of service came just days after President Obama pledged that the United States would launch a “proportional response” to the recent attacks on Sony Pictures, which government officials have linked to North Korea. While an attack on North Korea’s networks was suspected, there was no definitive evidence of it. Doug Madory, the director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, an Internet performance management company, said...

It's shameful that a company like Sony would go groveling to a deceitful, tyrannical, un-American thug, but this column is not about Sony’s sucking up to Al Sharpton. This column is about a tort system that is dedicated not to justice but to making lawyers richer, and it comes not only at the price of American prosperity but at the cost of our liberty as well. Certainly, Sony has a yellow streak as wide as Seth Rogen’s gut. Its creepy supplication to that race-hustling, MSNBC troll shows its true cowardly character, since Sharpton – unlike North Korea – doesn’t have...

Did China Help North Korea Hack Sony? A “senior administration official” told CNN yesterday that Washington had asked Beijing for assistance in connection with the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a unit of Sony Corporation. “We have discussed this issue with the Chinese to share information, express our concerns about this attack, and to ask for their cooperation,” the official told the network. To enlist the Chinese to its side, the White House has avoided the ticklish issue of Beijing’s assistance to the Kim regime. So at the moment the Obama administration is blaming North Korea—and only North Korea—for the...

Having confirmed unequivocally, in a statement by the FBI and reiterated by President Obama, that "the North Korean government is responsible" for hacking Sony, it appears the YouTube-less 'evidence' the FBI provided is being questioned by the hacking-collective 'Anonymous' and former Lulzsec hacker Sabu. As The Daily Beast reports, the hackers blasted, the North Koreans "don’t have the technical capabilities," and added "we all know the hacks didn't come from North Korea, and "all of the evidence FBI cites would be trivial things to do if a hacker was trying to misdirect attention to DPRK." Meanwhile, on Saturday afternoon, Guardians...

MOSCOW — In a sign of new limits on Facebook’s ability to serve as a platform for political opposition movements, Russian users appear to have been blocked from accessing a page calling for a protest in support of a prominent dissident. In 2011, Facebook was hailed by opposition movements during the Arab Spring and in Russia as a powerful new tool to spread information beyond the control of repressive governments. That may no longer be the case, at least not in Russia. Russian Internet regulators said Saturday that they had sent Facebook a “demand” that it block access to a...

N. Korea threatens ultra-harsh action on U.S. soil over hacking allegation 2014/12/21 21:26 SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Yonhap) -- North Korea threatened to carry out ultra-harsh military action on U.S. soil Sunday, one day after U.S. President Barack Obama vowed a proportional response against the North's alleged hacking attack into Sony Pictures. In a follow-up to the FBI's recent hacking accusation against Pyongyang, Obama vowed Friday (U.S time) to "respond proportionally," hinting at retaliatory action over the communist country's alleged hacking attack on the distributor of a controversial movie about North Korea, "The Interview." North Korea had been suspected of involvement...

(Reuters) - North Korea said on Saturday U.S. accusations that it was involved in a cyberattack on Sony Pictures were "groundless slander," and that it wanted a joint investigation into the incident with the United States. An unnamed spokesman of North Korea's foreign ministry said there would be serious consequences if Washington refused to agree to the probe and continued to accuse Pyongyang, according to the North Korean U.N. mission and its official KCNA news agency. The United States stands by its assertion that North Korea was to blame, a White House National Security Council (NSC) spokesman said on Saturday,...

A German steel factory suffered massive damage after hackers managed to access production networks, allowing them to tamper with the controls of a blast furnace, the government said in its annual IT security report. . . . . . Due to these failures, one of the plant’s blast furnaces could not be shut down in a controlled manner, which resulted in “massive damage to plant,” the BSI said, describing the technical skills of the attacker as “very advanced.”

North Korea says it's not involved in Sony hack; proposes joint probe with US Published December 20, 2014 North Korea says it can prove it is not behind the massive Sony Pictures cyberattack that has led to several e-mail leaks, threats on movie theaters and the cancellation of the release of the movie “The Interview.” The country has also said it proposes a joint investigation with the U.S. on the attack and if the U.S. does not agree, North Korea warns of “grave consequences,” state media says. The announcement comes as a response to the FBI's statement saying it has...

Researchers at Check Point have discovered a serious security vulnerability affecting at least 12 million leading-brand home and SME routers that appears to have gone unnoticed for over a decade. Dubbed the ’Misfortune Cookie’ flaw, the firm plans to give a detailed account of the issue at a forthcoming security conference but in the meantime it’s important to stress that no real-world attacks using it have yet been detected. That said, an attacker exploiting the flaw would be able to monitor all data travelling through a gateway such as files, emails and logins and have the power to infect connected...