"Release the Kraken!" er... US Cybercom

"United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) is an armed forces sub-unified command subordinate to United States Strategic Command. The command is located in Fort Meade, Maryland, and centralizes command of cyberspace operations, organizes existing cyber resources and synchronizes defense of U.S. military networks"  wiki

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 If it is established that the North Korean government and/or its agents attacked Sony then I say, let slip the dogs of cyberwar.  Hacking?  You like hacking and destructive cyberwar activity?  Hah!  We will burn your servers into piles of smoldering kimchi !!  pl  

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/18/us-sony-cybersecurity-theaters-idUSKBN0JV2MA20141218

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimchi

Comments

[MEP]

"We will burn your servers into piles of smoldering kimchi"......that alone would give me pause for reflection........do maggots gag? The weaponization of cabbage must be a product of a twisted mind. Have you shared the concept with the boys at DARPA?

[BabelFish]

Amen! Of course, the usual 'American Lackey Running Dogs' commentary will spew forth from North Korea. They may even shell a Korean village or three. I wonder what the Chinese will do (or ignore) to aid and abet us a little payback?

[turcopolier]

MEP

DARPA? Shh... pl

[MEP]

Tongue firmly in cheek. I say sub-contract the retaliatory response to a bunch of teenage gamers. Cheap and damned effective. As to Olfactory weapons of destruction, you must admit...are "Out of the Box" and caused a much needed belly laugh. I'll now take time to clean the coffee off my screen. Moldering kimchi? Digested or does it matter?

[turcopolier]

MEP

Good idea to use the useless little p----s for guerrilla attacks. they can work off some student debts. for the main onslaught NSAs main frames will do the job! Heh! Heh! pl

[MEP]

A case of Mountain Dew or Red Bull......throw in a supply of Cheetos and Doritos then lock the door.

[turcopolier]

MEP

Some new Chinese made cock rings? pl

[MEP]

If you must, I now need to clean the coffee spew off my screen again. Twice within one hour, you now have the record. Take note, I am not known to be easily amused. Kudos

[Cee]

We will burn your servers into piles of smoldering kimchi

Hilarious!!

[Medicine Man]

I was wondering if you were going to comment on this, Col. While the Sony emails have been good fodder for entertainment, the underlying issue is quite serious if it turns out it is the government of NK is behind the hacking for the purposes of intimidation. If they want to be thin-skinned, let them; if they want us to respect their exaggerated self-regard, then they should get an attitude adjustment.

[AEL]

Col:

Unleashing the kraken over a movie hacking incident would be a really bad idea. It would be a huge tech transfer to the North Koreans (sending them malware means that they will have malware to study) and make us all less safe. Besides, their infrastructure is far less dependent on computer networks than ours.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/us_offensive_cy.html

[Charles I]

Well if we don't see the damn movie the terrorists have won.

[turcopolier]

AEL

Canadian spoilsport! OK. Let's bomb them! pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

Basically, that was what Iranians have been reputed to have done to thousands of servers in Saudi Arabia...as retaliation...

[BabelFish]

Sending them malware - you mean like sending them a Microsoft operating system?

[ThePanzer]

Imagine you live in a nice house, with nice things, a nice job, nice kids, everything is nice. You're neighbor though, lives in a rundown crack house, drives a jalopy with dings in it everywhere, uses meth and beats his kids, prone to extreme violence with little provocation.

You and him get into an argument over something stupid. Since he's a meth head it escalates into potential violence in short order. You have literally everything to lose, he has basically nothing to lose. Who should be more careful in the confrontation? You may be able to whoop his ass pretty easily, but in the long term how much damage can he keep doing to all your nice stuff?

The US has lots to lose and an economy that's increasingly internet dependent. Before we decide to escalate and whoop some ass on the meth head, North Korea in this case, maybe we should remember that people with nice things have a lot to lose and people with nothing have very little to lose.

We've already sanctioned them to kingdom come so no ammo there. They're already international pariahs, so again no dice. They're already frightfully poor, totalitarian, backwards and haven't moved an inch on internal regime change...so no dice. That leaves what exactly? Military strikes are out too...

I'm not sure if cutting off Kim Jung Un's access to world of warcraft and porn is worth the more than reciprocal damage they can do to us in return on the intertoobs. Especially with, I dunno, the christmas online shopping season in full swing.

At the personal level even most poor white trash knows better than to get into it with their crack head neighbors. I'm not sure why this is such a hard concept at the national level.

Hollywood brought this on itself. Why don't we sit down, shut up, and let CNN swap to whatever shiny object gets its attention next? (or at least check in with Seoul before taking action due to slights against our precious national honor, since they're basically the meth heads wife in this analogy, who's also likely to get beat up by the meth head due to our stupid argument)

[r whitman]

Why should we care if a North Korean nominee attacks a Japanese company? It not like they attacked Target or Home Depot.

[The beaver]

@ BabelFish

Like the unintended consequences of Stuxnet:

http://dailyreckoning.com/writing-the-next-chapter-of-mil-tech-history/

"Unfortunately, Stuxnet has, in some respects, backfired. The computer worm broke out of Iran’s nuclear facilities, perhaps through an infected laptop that was connected to the Internet. The software, designed to propagate virally, spread beyond its intended target and across the Internet at large, infecting private computers and networks. Since then, it has spawned imitators who have exploited its code base for new attacks."

[MEP]

"Let's bomb them!"....with copious amounts of smoldering/moldering appropriately processed kimchi........and as to the Cock Rings..Day Glo would be age appropriate and helpful in a low light environment.

Not to loose track of the possible serious nature of the affair, it would be interesting to know just how secure the Sony systems actually were rated. If the NKs can crack anything "Top of the Line" many need to worry. In the meantime why not have a bit of fun....there is way too much
"Dark Matter" to ponder.

[shepherd]

This is rich. The entire industry is reeling from the shocking revelation that the execs at Sony are a bunch of a-holes. And Scott Rudin is saying mean things about people? Has anyone ever heard him say anything nice? This is Bosszilla we're talking about. That's actually his nickname.

Government hack? Sophisticated cyberwarfare? Or maybe Sony had the brilliant security practice of having one office get hacked, fixing that vulnerability there, but then leaving it unfixed everywhere else. That is the kind of thing that happens when your chief requirement for a security official is that he be big, bald, and mean-looking.

So I'm going to respectfully disagree with our host's proposal. Let the Kraken have a cheerful holiday with friends and family. Instead, we should all thank the North Koreans for this delightful early Christmas present--not least because rumor had it The Interview is a complete piece of s--t, and now none of us will be tricked into seeing it. Instead of frying The Most Great Leader's servers, I propose we gather together a few hundred terrifed schoolgirls to sing songs in his honor. He seems to dig that.

[ked]

I know most here don't like him, but the thrust of Moore's comments is telling of Hollywood "art" these days...
"Dear Sony Hackers: now that u run Hollywood, I'd also like less romantic comedies, fewer Michael Bay movies and no more Transformers."

IF NK did it, was most likely by purchasing the files from a Sony IT consultant/punk out to make some real money... hey! does Sony have the film-rights to the hack backstory? is the movie so bad they hacked themselves?! (Hollywood is happiest when they self-reference, a la Star is Born & Sunset Blvd.) Is it no more than a pissing contest, given NK hating Japan, China in agreement & happy to oblige w/ a test of their powerful Ministry of Hackdom?

The Un-Kim going ballistic over a mediocre comedic slight is more revealing than threatening, as is Sony's brain-dead reaction & the media's angst ("could this impact my career?"). It's just theater, folks.

Yet, I keep wondering if we now live in a world derived from Catch-22 & The Sheep Look Up.

[Farooq]

A better way to retaliate would be to smuggle in millions of cheap devices and provide free data access to people in North Korea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free

[Cee]

Babak,

It couldn't have happened to nicer people!

[allbut6]

I'm not sure that it's NK doing this. If it's the first shot in a cyber war. It doesn't seem to be a very effective one.

Our vulnerabilities are manifest. Our infrastructure is filled with low hanging fruit (Electrical grid SCADA, water plants, traffic light systems, you name it.)

Remember that we use a lot of the Siemens controllers like the controllers hacked in Iran centrifuge attack. Our Cyber resources seem to be mainly applied to 0 day attacks. Unless I'm very mistaken, the US has not been working on defensive options.

The NSA and FBU and DEA seems to be primarily interested in hoovering up all our communications. They have not been that successful at detecting attacks. Boston cones to mind.

Also note that the NSA couldn't tell what documents Snowden took when he left town. Kinda like they were not paying attention to first principles.

Of course all I can do is conjecture. It's quite possible that the NSA is deeply embedded in the NK computer systems. But it's quite possible that attack comes from elsewhere.

But I ramble ... if only Sony had a contract with Keith Alexander ...

[shege]

How about we serve them macadamia nuts in a bag? That ought to cause a meltdown.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30461979