Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and
Speaker 1: joining me in the studio today is my esteemed colleague
Speaker 1: Ben Bullen, host of many shows, one of which is
Speaker 1: Stuff They Do Don't Want You To Know. Yes, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me on. And of course by now listeners
Speaker 1: are probably used to us hanging out here on tech
Speaker 1: stuff and in our various other endeavors. Yeah, yeah, Ben
Speaker 1: and I are thickest thieves. Ben is one of those
Speaker 1: most valuable player types in her office who will jump
Speaker 1: in at a moment's notice to help folks out, even
Speaker 1: at the expense of his own sanity, which I don't value.
Speaker 1: So I'm happy to have him here. Thanks man, that
Speaker 1: might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me.
Speaker 1: It could be. Ben also had me on his show
Speaker 1: Stuff They Don't Want You To Know, to talk about
Speaker 1: today's topic, the Sony Hack, And at the time when
Speaker 1: we were recording, it was still in December and the
Speaker 1: story was still unfolding. In fact, you could say that's
Speaker 1: still unfolding now, although the news has certainly slowed down
Speaker 1: significantly since the end of December. But we ended up
Speaker 1: talking about the story as far as we could at
Speaker 1: that point, and even made some predictions of our own,
Speaker 1: some some theories of our own. So, uh, in order
Speaker 1: to return the favor, Ben's joined me for this episode
Speaker 1: so that we can revisit that topic, talk about the
Speaker 1: Sony hack, maybe talk a little bit about some of
Speaker 1: the information that came out after we had already recorded
Speaker 1: the episode, and uh, just kind of explain what happened
Speaker 1: and how it's different from some of the other big
Speaker 1: stories we've heard, Like you know, all the stories about
Speaker 1: the Sony PlayStation network at the Xbox Live network getting
Speaker 1: brought down, those were done through direct denial of service
Speaker 1: attacks or distributed denial of service attacks, I should say,
Speaker 1: so they were just atributed denial of service attacks, which
Speaker 1: is really a brute force way of shutting up a server.
Speaker 1: Completely different in comparison to the original Sony hacks, wherein
Speaker 1: the various films were downloaded. But before we go any further,
Speaker 1: I just have to say I really appreciate what you're
Speaker 1: saying here, Jonathan. I'm blushing. Thank god I grew this
Speaker 1: beard out so you can see it, and thank god
Speaker 1: as an audio podcast, but this is not entirely all
Speaker 1: truism on my part. I come here also as a
Speaker 1: representative of my co host Matt Frederick. UM, we had
Speaker 1: such a great time doing this two part episode on
Speaker 1: Sony for stuff they want, you know, and uh we
Speaker 1: we actually went back and listened to it because we
Speaker 1: liked some of the jokes that the three of us
Speaker 1: were doing. But we really wanted another crack at this
Speaker 1: just because other information is emerged. UM, and listeners out there,
Speaker 1: if you do check out Jonathan's earlier appearance, UM, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: some of those predictions that you and I made are
Speaker 1: not that far off. Yeah yeah, And in fact that
Speaker 1: again we don't We still don't have all the details.
Speaker 1: We still have some conflicting information out there, stuff that
Speaker 1: conflicts with the theories we have. It still hasn't changed
Speaker 1: my theories yet, But I do acknowledge the fact that
Speaker 1: I the thing that I believe may not be true,
Speaker 1: and in fact is being said to be untrue by
Speaker 1: certain entities that go by three letter initialisms, like the FBI.
Speaker 1: Uh So, let's start at the beginning, A very good
Speaker 1: place to start. On November that was the day that
Speaker 1: the Sony hack was revealed, and I say revealed because
Speaker 1: the extent of this hack, the incredible amount of information
Speaker 1: that was stolen as part of this hack was so
Speaker 1: huge as to require months of time toensic research. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the initial story we got and was
Speaker 1: that the the hackers responsible claim to have stolen one
Speaker 1: terabytes of data. A terabyte of data is a huge amount, right,
Speaker 1: And if you're thinking of a hacker that's accessing a
Speaker 1: system remotely, so we're assuming that this person did not
Speaker 1: dress themselves up as a Sony employee infiltrate the company.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about remotely accessing this and siphoning off
Speaker 1: that data. Guys, you know, if you've ever downloaded a
Speaker 1: big file, you know it takes time. Even if you
Speaker 1: have a fast internet connection, it could take a while.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're trying to download let's say a
Speaker 1: really big computer game that's maybe thirty or forty gigabytes,
Speaker 1: that takes time. Terabytes are enormous. A hundred terabytes is huge.
Speaker 1: It would take months to download that much information, and
Speaker 1: only if the faucet is always on. Yeah, you and
Speaker 1: also to be able to do it without raising anyone's attention,
Speaker 1: because would see the activity over the connection. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: would think at least someone would figure out something in
Speaker 1: that time. So all of this is to say that
Speaker 1: it's the While November twenty was when we became aware
Speaker 1: of it, the actual activity had to have been happening
Speaker 1: for at least a few months, if not longer. Right,
Speaker 1: So what what exactly happens? I love this description because
Speaker 1: it's so cinematic. Yeah, so imagine you are an employee
Speaker 1: of Sony Pictures Entertainment, because we always say the Sony hack,
Speaker 1: but we're specifically referring to Sony Pictures, so the movie
Speaker 1: industry arm of Sony. So you're an employee of Sony
Speaker 1: Pictures Entertainment. You go into work on November. It's the
Speaker 1: week of Thanksgiving. You're looking forward to having dinner with
Speaker 1: your family, having a few days off. You come in,
Speaker 1: you turn on your computer to get your little work
Speaker 1: you work done, type of, type of, type of, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, like it was a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties computer thriller, a skull stylized skull all pops up
Speaker 1: on your screen, and this feels like it. It feels
Speaker 1: like a stupid movie already, Like you think about those
Speaker 1: movies like the net. You know, any movie where Hollywood
Speaker 1: is trying to get across the idea of what hacking
Speaker 1: is like, and they they visualize it where it's not
Speaker 1: someone saying at a computer typing in code. No, it's
Speaker 1: creeping through a dungeon. And then you see a skull
Speaker 1: and crossbones. That's firewall. That's what this was in real life.
Speaker 1: The skulls pop up on everyone's screen and it has
Speaker 1: a phrase that essentially says, this is just the beginning.
Speaker 1: We've obtained all your internal data, and it went on
Speaker 1: to warn that if the company did not quote obey
Speaker 1: the hackers demands end quote, that the internal information would
Speaker 1: be shared with the world. And this had this included
Speaker 1: everything from well, they didn't even know what it included yet,
Speaker 1: so they didn't have any idea of the extent of
Speaker 1: that personal information that I that that sensitive info. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, it was incredibly sensitive information. And those
Speaker 1: demands we're going to get back to because the demands
Speaker 1: are one of the keys I think to this mystery,
Speaker 1: which is still sort is okay. So the way the
Speaker 1: way it works out, the news spreads quickly eleven am
Speaker 1: same day November, it hits the media right, that's right,
Speaker 1: and so this is where, uh, different media outlets start
Speaker 1: to cover the story. Uh, the employees of Sony Pictures
Speaker 1: have no access to their computers. Also, their email servers
Speaker 1: are completely down, and even their phone systems because they
Speaker 1: were using networked phones, which is you know, we we've
Speaker 1: had network phones in this office in the past, so
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that if your internet goes down,
Speaker 1: suddenly you don't have phone service either, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of creepsy out a little bit. So they literally couldn't
Speaker 1: do any work. They couldn't access any of their files,
Speaker 1: any of those important documents, contracts, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: All of that was inaccessible. And uh, meanwhile, as the
Speaker 1: story would go on, I'm gonna skip ahead a little bit,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna go through a timeline, little little detail
Speaker 1: this stuff as we go through. But eventually the hackers
Speaker 1: refer to themselves as Guardians of Peace or GOP. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also amuses me because to think when we're talking about
Speaker 1: the GOP and this, since it's not the Grand Old Party,
Speaker 1: the Guardians of Peace. Um, this is when they claim
Speaker 1: to have stolen one terabytes of data. Ten terabytes is
Speaker 1: enough for all the information in the Library of Congress.
Speaker 1: So they stole ten Libraries of Congress. Yes, they stole
Speaker 1: the Library of Congress ten times. Now right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: used to use UM. I used to use uh conquistadors
Speaker 1: as an element as a unit of measurement for everything.
Speaker 1: But now I'm I'm willing to go and switch to
Speaker 1: Library of Congress at least when it comes to data.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this and and of course some of that
Speaker 1: information was in the form of high resolution digital film files.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about that. And the second so on
Speaker 1: top of all that, this is this is another like
Speaker 1: you know, kick once you're down. You've already been knocked
Speaker 1: down because you've had your this hack stop your work.
Speaker 1: You've been told that a lot of your information has
Speaker 1: been stolen. On top of all that, they also the
Speaker 1: hackers also installed malware called Wiper And you can probably
Speaker 1: guess what this does just based on the name. It
Speaker 1: starts to erase all the data on these various machines.
Speaker 1: So not only did you have all this information stolen,
Speaker 1: but now it's truly inaccessible. It's been white from your computers.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of it was probably UM. You were
Speaker 1: probably able to get back at some of it using
Speaker 1: some I T. Expertise, like deleting a file off your
Speaker 1: computer doesn't mean it's gone forever. Overwriting it does so
Speaker 1: unless wiper and it may very well do this. Unless
Speaker 1: Wiper over was overwriting all the data as it was
Speaker 1: erasing it, then you could in theory at least get
Speaker 1: some of that. But at any rate, Uh, there were
Speaker 1: even that UM reports that Sony account Twitter feeds were
Speaker 1: being uh compromised, and so the Guardians of Peace were
Speaker 1: able to tweet out using that. We actually saw something
Speaker 1: similar to that recently here in the United States with
Speaker 1: UM the Central Command Twitter feed. Did you see that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The The thing is that Twitter is uh, from what
Speaker 1: I understand, much easier to compromise than something that would
Speaker 1: be a well protected, uh corporate level system of of
Speaker 1: this magnitude. But it does tell us something really important, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: because it tells us that this would have been a
Speaker 1: multi tiered attack. Even if even if or rather a
Speaker 1: multifront attacked, sir, even if Twitter was just uh the
Speaker 1: sprinkle on the cupcake, this still shows us that this
Speaker 1: was well thought out, It was established in advance, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be an impulsive thing at all.
Speaker 1: Just just going back to how much memory and how
Speaker 1: much time it would take to steal Yes, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean obviously, like you wouldn't be able to do that
Speaker 1: all on a single day. So novemby was essentially the
Speaker 1: day that the hackers decided, Okay, now we let them
Speaker 1: know what we have done. Like, we've already done it.
Speaker 1: It's it's that parts. So we're we're already scott away,
Speaker 1: scott free, you know. Now we're just gonna set the
Speaker 1: the we're gonna make the world burn, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: walk away in slow motion. But Sony still has no
Speaker 1: idea what's going on? For like a week? Right? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean again, it happened during Thanksgiving weeks, so this
Speaker 1: was a time when a lot of people were planning
Speaker 1: on being on vacation and suddenly, now you've got this
Speaker 1: amazing crisis to deal with. Uh. And it would take
Speaker 1: more than a week for for executives to start even
Speaker 1: getting a hint at how bad this attack was. So
Speaker 1: on December one, that's when executives became aware that the
Speaker 1: stolen data included personal information about employees and their depends,
Speaker 1: such as social security numbers and financial information as well
Speaker 1: as health information, like one of the leaks of documents
Speaker 1: gave details to employees who had sought treatment for things
Speaker 1: like cirrhosis or cancer or there or had dependents who
Speaker 1: had to seek treatments for such things. And so, I
Speaker 1: mean that's a huge breach. Now are we talking, uh,
Speaker 1: in terms of for sent injury numbers? How many employees?
Speaker 1: About fifty thousand social Security numbers were stolen? Actually around
Speaker 1: forty seven thousand. I rounded up round, I rounded up
Speaker 1: for forty seven thousand and fifty. But yeah, more than
Speaker 1: forty seven thousand social Security numbers were stolen. Now these
Speaker 1: were both current and former Sony employees, because it was
Speaker 1: just it was databasis full of information of the various
Speaker 1: employees who had either worked there in the past or
Speaker 1: we're currently working. Not to downplay the gravity of this,
Speaker 1: because it is very dangerous and it's an absolute nutter
Speaker 1: of violation and privacy. But not only is that not
Speaker 1: the end of what they stole, but they stole so
Speaker 1: much that if you're okay, I'd like to infomercial this
Speaker 1: and maybe chime in with some but wait, there's more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, that is well warranted, right, because the first
Speaker 1: one the one that's probably the easiest for people to
Speaker 1: latch onto, because it's a simple it's a simple story,
Speaker 1: the idea of stolen intellectual property, in this case, stolen movies. Right.
Speaker 1: So the theft included five movies that were scheduled for
Speaker 1: Sony release, one which had already been released, which was
Speaker 1: a fury that one had already come out. But then
Speaker 1: there was also Annie Mr Turner, Still Alice and to
Speaker 1: Write Love on Her Arms. Those had all been stolen
Speaker 1: as well. Uh okay, Yeah, So so those are the
Speaker 1: easy ones for people to latch onto. But then there
Speaker 1: was all the internal communications, right, this is where you
Speaker 1: had information about salary, uh for top executives, like the
Speaker 1: top seventeen executives, not to mention I think six thousand
Speaker 1: other Sony employees. Their information got leaked as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was also internal documents that uh that were the
Speaker 1: records of people having complaints about Sony. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: were there were some fairly undiplomatic internal communications regarding regarding
Speaker 1: coworkers or talent, yeah, or the President of the United States.
Speaker 1: There were Yeah, no, there's we'll we'll touch on that
Speaker 1: again in a moment. But out of all these you
Speaker 1: probably heard the most about Adam Sandler. He got he
Speaker 1: got raked over the coals quite a bit. And the
Speaker 1: internal communications a lot of in place that they just
Speaker 1: didn't like the direction that the movie studio was going in,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to see if you were Adam Sandler comedies,
Speaker 1: which is I guess okay, because Netflix picked him up
Speaker 1: so for four films. Yeah, so Sony might be free
Speaker 1: of him. We're not. And that's not the only stuff
Speaker 1: that got leaked. Still, no, no, there's still more, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's tons of information that got taken from this. Uh,
Speaker 1: personal information about talent was leaked. Stuff like passports and visas,
Speaker 1: like copies of this stuff that people needed to do. Uh,
Speaker 1: there were so much things that so many things that
Speaker 1: were stolen as a result of this. And uh, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go through the rest of the timeline to kind
Speaker 1: of give you an idea of how this all unfolded
Speaker 1: and what extent we begin to learn more and more
Speaker 1: about the damages. Uh. Meanwhile, one other thing to mention
Speaker 1: is that Sony employees have many of them, have filed
Speaker 1: lawsuits against the company for not protecting their personal information
Speaker 1: well enough to prevent this from happen. Name so, there
Speaker 1: are several class action lawsuits have been leveled against the
Speaker 1: company as a result of this. Because people's lives have
Speaker 1: been really impacted. We're not just talking about you know,
Speaker 1: celebrities here. I mean that their lives have been impacted too.
Speaker 1: And it's not I personally don't think that that means
Speaker 1: that celebrities should be expected to deal with more crap
Speaker 1: than the rest of us. I mean, sometimes that happens
Speaker 1: because it's just one of those things that goes along
Speaker 1: with all the fame and everything else. But regular employees,
Speaker 1: people just normal folks like me and you who go
Speaker 1: in to do their job every day and it may
Speaker 1: not be glamorous, but it's it's an important part of
Speaker 1: the function of the company. They were impacted too, just
Speaker 1: regular folks, and they will tend not to have the
Speaker 1: financial wherewithal or the social safety net to help protect
Speaker 1: themselves in the aftermath of such an event, right right.
Speaker 1: They don't have the benefit of that safety net like
Speaker 1: people who might have of a lawyer on retainer or
Speaker 1: enormous sums of money to lay in when you go
Speaker 1: to sleep at night. You know, I have a I
Speaker 1: have a very particular fantasy in my head of what
Speaker 1: Hollywood celebrities like, how they live. It's mostly Scrooge McDuck oriented. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: did you see that? This is totally unrelated, But did
Speaker 1: you did you ever see the study of what what
Speaker 1: would happen if you tried to swim through a vault
Speaker 1: full of gold? I imagine that you would not feel
Speaker 1: very good. Yeah, it will. It will break you in
Speaker 1: numerous ways. So maybe it's good that you were talking
Speaker 1: about sleeping on paper money probably better for your back.
Speaker 1: And speaking of back, you went to Let's see where
Speaker 1: where should we go next? Let's look at November twenty eight,
Speaker 1: because we've been talking a lot about this hack. The
Speaker 1: the initial messages from the hackers didn't identify any particular
Speaker 1: motivation for the attack. They it was more of almost
Speaker 1: like an extortion thing, like do what we tell you,
Speaker 1: or you're gonna get it. You know. It was like
Speaker 1: and it essentially sounded like pay us off or we
Speaker 1: will ruin you. Now. They didn't name a specific amount
Speaker 1: of money at that initial point. They just said do
Speaker 1: what we say. Yeah, so they The reason why this
Speaker 1: is important is because a lot of the discussion that
Speaker 1: has followed has centered around a very specific topic that
Speaker 1: we're about to touch on. But that all came after
Speaker 1: the fact, which makes me a little cautious in actually
Speaker 1: saying that that was the reason for the whole thing,
Speaker 1: the whole time. So November twenty, this is four days
Speaker 1: after the initial attack was discovered. That's the first time
Speaker 1: anyone floats the possibility that the attack was in response
Speaker 1: to Sony's plans to release the film. The interview, which
Speaker 1: I have we both seen it at this point. I
Speaker 1: have not seen it. Did you watch it? I did
Speaker 1: see it. What did you think? Well, I will I
Speaker 1: will say that I enjoy uh, Seth Rogan and James
Speaker 1: Franco a bit more than you, which is which is
Speaker 1: something we've talked about before. Yeah, and it's not hard
Speaker 1: to enjoy Seth Rogan and James Franco more than you do.
Speaker 1: No offense. Right now, I have a very low you
Speaker 1: own it. You own it, though, and I respect that. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. I'll be I'll be candid here. It was
Speaker 1: not my favorite film because I think that while I
Speaker 1: I enjoy a lot of a lot of what might
Speaker 1: be termed low brow comedy, I'm not above it. You know,
Speaker 1: one thing that I noticed sometimes is that it is
Speaker 1: very convenient to conflate satire and racism, and I think
Speaker 1: there's uh to me. There were moments in the film
Speaker 1: that I that I thought were racist, and I and
Speaker 1: also was talking with my girlfriend about this and said, okay,
Speaker 1: well check me here, like my am I being two
Speaker 1: PC and my and my getting my jim socks, I'll
Speaker 1: punched up over something unnecessarily. And she came in and
Speaker 1: watched part of it, and she said, no, I think
Speaker 1: that's pretty very racist. Yeah. No, there is definitely a
Speaker 1: difference between using satire in order to point out things
Speaker 1: that you see as being important or unequal or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's something that you are actually commenting on and bringing
Speaker 1: attention to and starting a discussion over. And then there's
Speaker 1: a totally different type where you're just making fun of
Speaker 1: something or or you know, especially in hurtful ways. Well,
Speaker 1: here's a here's the question I have for you. I
Speaker 1: don't want to derailist, but the question would be then, uh,
Speaker 1: in comparison to let's say the South Park film also
Speaker 1: a work of satire in any ways, So what makes
Speaker 1: these two different? You know? Is it because the south
Speaker 1: Park film is animated. I think part of it is
Speaker 1: that South Park is really about pointing out the uh,
Speaker 1: the the absolute ridiculousness of things like racism. I mean,
Speaker 1: south Park used the movie used Canadians as the the
Speaker 1: great big enemy, you know, that's what all the people
Speaker 1: they blame Canada. There's a whole song about it. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good song, actually was nominated for an Academy Award.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, the you know, that was really
Speaker 1: to kind of poke fun saying like this is literally
Speaker 1: there's no difference between people like you know, you look
Speaker 1: at Canadians and Americans, there's no difference there, just as
Speaker 1: there's no difference with any people of any two nations,
Speaker 1: and therefore the concept of racism itself is utterly ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. There's there's a method to
Speaker 1: the prat falls, as you would say. But the I
Speaker 1: don't know if anyone's ever said that before. But the
Speaker 1: thing about the interview, despite that, I think it was enjoyable.
Speaker 1: I definitely laughed out loud a couple of times. But
Speaker 1: I believe it's received much much more, much more international
Speaker 1: attention than ever would have had it not been associated
Speaker 1: with this, and also, you know, for people who aren't
Speaker 1: familiar with it, Uh, the entire film is about people
Speaker 1: traveling to assassinate Kim Jong un, the current leader of
Speaker 1: North Korea. Right, The whole idea about a host of
Speaker 1: a celebrity talk show type program and his producer heading
Speaker 1: over to North Korea because it turns out Kim jongun
Speaker 1: is a big fan of the program, and then being
Speaker 1: told by is the CIA, Yeah, yeah, the CIA to
Speaker 1: take this opportunity to assassinate Kim Jong un and uh
Speaker 1: and of course, uh spoiler alert, the leader is killed
Speaker 1: in the film. Uh. So this was November. Was the
Speaker 1: first time anyone had even mentioned this as a possibility
Speaker 1: of a monovader. Yeah, there was. This was not from
Speaker 1: the attackers at all. This was all just kind of
Speaker 1: a I wonder if this thing that's coming out later
Speaker 1: this month had anything to do with our actually next month,
Speaker 1: because this was still in November. Um so, yeah, we
Speaker 1: didn't really have any evidence here. And now there was
Speaker 1: a North Korean website that had referred to the interview
Speaker 1: as quote an evil act of provocation end quote. So
Speaker 1: you could say, well, they said that it was an
Speaker 1: evil act of provocation. We were they were provoked, so
Speaker 1: maybe this was the act they were provoked into doing.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, I mean, like I said, the
Speaker 1: the attack itself must have gone on for months, and
Speaker 1: it was only in those last few months that the
Speaker 1: interview was even getting the promotion of here's a movie
Speaker 1: that's coming out soon, and here's what it's all about.
Speaker 1: So that would have meant that North Korea was just
Speaker 1: paying attention to this film for longer than the American
Speaker 1: public was, and that that the attack began months in advance,
Speaker 1: in anticipation for this December release. All that being said,
Speaker 1: December one, that's when the top seventeen Sony executive salaries
Speaker 1: were leaked. Uh, the information had already been stolen, but
Speaker 1: the information that had then been leaked publicly. A lot
Speaker 1: of these leaks happened on an app that allows for
Speaker 1: anonymous text dumps, so you can just put things up
Speaker 1: on that app and not leave a trace of who
Speaker 1: you are, and that's how a lot of this information
Speaker 1: got distributed, also, including that same file where the salaries
Speaker 1: of more than six thousand Sony employees. One of the
Speaker 1: big things that came out about this was a disparity
Speaker 1: in pay depending upon gender and race. And so this
Speaker 1: also makes me think the nature of the leak. The
Speaker 1: first stuff that's leaked here, here's a bread crumb for
Speaker 1: bread crumb later on, the nature of the stuff that
Speaker 1: was leaked first was incredibly harmful to Sony the company
Speaker 1: uh in an industry perspective, but had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with any sort of like it didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with the interview directly anyway. So that to me
Speaker 1: suggests that there's a very specific motivation behind the attack.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into that when we get towards the end.
Speaker 1: So December three was when the Adam Sandler PDF dump happened.
Speaker 1: There's a big dump of Adam Sandler information. And I'm
Speaker 1: using that word in a couple of different ways. It
Speaker 1: could have been a little bit of editorializing. This is
Speaker 1: also when the data including a passport information, visa information,
Speaker 1: other private information about celebrities who had worked on various
Speaker 1: Sonny films, actors, actresses, directors, that kind of thing got leaked.
Speaker 1: So this is where people were getting copies of Angelina
Speaker 1: Jolie's passport, for example. Um they also included confidential information
Speaker 1: about film contracts, and budgets. So again, very industry specific
Speaker 1: stuff and very very damaging because Okay, first off, this
Speaker 1: breeds such dissension amidst the employees, you know, each other's salaries,
Speaker 1: and huge morale issue. Huge and then also the idea
Speaker 1: about finding numbers and film contracts and budgets, that's a
Speaker 1: massive amount of leverage lost on Sony's part. Well, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, these are industry secrets, like if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard stories about how miraculously no movie ever released
Speaker 1: makes money, like you know, if you have, if you
Speaker 1: have the inside look on these budgets, the actual numbers,
Speaker 1: the real thing, then suddenly you know how much actual
Speaker 1: money was being spent producing it versus how much was
Speaker 1: made in revenue. And then you've got some really tough
Speaker 1: tax questions that you need to answer. So again, very
Speaker 1: much a very savvy attack. This is gonna be trouble
Speaker 1: for Sony down the road. Yeah, it's gonna be troull
Speaker 1: for a while. So December four, when the Associated Press
Speaker 1: reports that cybersecurity experts found similarities in the code used
Speaker 1: in the Sony hacks of with another attack that targeted
Speaker 1: South Korean companies in two thou and you remember the
Speaker 1: name of that attack, right, Oh, I do remember reading it.
Speaker 1: What was it? Dark Soul, spelled like the capital of
Speaker 1: South Korea. Oh, that's so brilliant. Nah, I was thinking
Speaker 1: of something else too, so I didn't. I didn't even
Speaker 1: hear of it called dark Soul. That's awesome, but it's
Speaker 1: so again. This was sort of a a uh a
Speaker 1: hint that perhaps North Korea was behind it, because Korea
Speaker 1: was was very much believed to be behind the two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen attacks against South Korea. Yeah, so uh, but
Speaker 1: no one's come out and said anything yet. December five
Speaker 1: was when messages allegedly from Guardians of Peace threatened Sony
Speaker 1: executives that they don't condemn their own company, but they're
Speaker 1: really poorly constructed. They actually don't read the same way
Speaker 1: as the initial messages did in the attack reveal back
Speaker 1: on Nowyo. So one of the things we need to
Speaker 1: keep in mind is that the various communications to Sony
Speaker 1: and to others may or may not have come from
Speaker 1: the hackers. We don't necessarily know. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: when you hear about anonymous targeting someone, you don't know
Speaker 1: what to what extent The the overall group of Anonymous
Speaker 1: feels that way right, Because Anonymous is made up of
Speaker 1: a huge number of people with different ideologies, different motivations.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a splinter group will end up targeting somebody, whereas
Speaker 1: the rest of the group either doesn't care actively saying hey,
Speaker 1: don't do that. But that's the thing is that it's
Speaker 1: impossible that like you say, I got a message from Anonymous,
Speaker 1: and maybe technically that's true, but you're gonna have people
Speaker 1: in Anonymous saying, hey, whoa dude, I'm totally not that
Speaker 1: was not us. That was not us. That that people
Speaker 1: create factions within Anonymous that are oriented towards a specific
Speaker 1: project that sort, and I think we even mentioned it.
Speaker 1: I think I might have brought it up in our
Speaker 1: Sony Hack episodes for stuff they don't want you to know. Then,
Speaker 1: this reminds me a lot of the Jack the Ripper letters,
Speaker 1: because when Jack the Ripper was active, there were letters
Speaker 1: written to the police, the London police that was the
Speaker 1: were essentially taunting the police, and a lot of ripperologists
Speaker 1: experts in the field believe that many of those, if
Speaker 1: not all of them, are fakes. They weren't written by
Speaker 1: the killer, and it could be that some of the
Speaker 1: messages that are attributed to Guardians the piece we're not
Speaker 1: written at all by anyone remotely involved. We don't know, right,
Speaker 1: because there's no way to verify now. On December seven,
Speaker 1: North Korea officially says they had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: this attack. On December eight, another alleged Guardians of Peace
Speaker 1: message demands that Sony stop immediately showing the movie of Terrorism,
Speaker 1: which can break regional peace and caused the war. Um,
Speaker 1: they don't specifically name the interview, although I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what other films. I don't think they
Speaker 1: were talking about Annie, So if they did, it was
Speaker 1: The Hard Knock Life for us. But uh no, I
Speaker 1: think they meant the interview, but that wasn't specifically named.
Speaker 1: And uh these events continue though, because the hackers, now
Speaker 1: after a little bit of silence, are communicating semi regularly
Speaker 1: or at least leaking information there. There's someone is communicating
Speaker 1: semi regularly. Whether it's the actual hackers or not, we
Speaker 1: don't really know. Um. Also, it's kind of interesting that,
Speaker 1: uh that you know, we had that that previous message
Speaker 1: supposedly from the Guardians of Peace saying, you know, condemn
Speaker 1: your own company, which is a very odd request. It's
Speaker 1: that's another breadcrumb force, I think. Yeah, to say, like,
Speaker 1: please sign a paper that says your company stinks. That's
Speaker 1: essentially what they were saying. It just seems seems a
Speaker 1: little odd. It seems a bit childish and personal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little weird, all right. So December night through eleventh,
Speaker 1: now we get a little bit more activity with more
Speaker 1: leaked material. The hackers release emails that reveal some pretty
Speaker 1: ugly conversations about various actors, directors, and even the President
Speaker 1: of the United States, including some remarks that you could
Speaker 1: at least say are racially insensitive, if not outright racist.
Speaker 1: Uh and Sony executive Scott Ruden actually with an issue
Speaker 1: an apology on the on December eleventh for the messages
Speaker 1: that he claims were written in just with no offense
Speaker 1: intended and um yeah, saying that was just a joke.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean any offense. It really meant like I
Speaker 1: didn't expect any one of that race to ever read
Speaker 1: this email that I wrote. That's what it comes across
Speaker 1: to me. Maybe I'm I'm sorry, I got caught. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love I love the I'm sorry, I'm sorry if
Speaker 1: I offended you. Not I'm sorry I offended you. Not
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I said that thing, but I'm sorry that
Speaker 1: you felt this way in response to something I said. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that you're upset. Yeah exactly. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you can just keep your apologies then, Mr. Now this
Speaker 1: isn't this is an interesting thing that comes next, because
Speaker 1: this is something I did not know about until you
Speaker 1: told me. Yeah. So, December fifte Aaron Sorkin publishes an
Speaker 1: open editorial column in The New York Times. Now, Sorkin
Speaker 1: had had some of his emails revealed in a process
Speaker 1: of this, some of which ended up having Sorkin being
Speaker 1: a little uh uncharitable towards certain Hollywood personalities. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: saying that certain actors are not a draw and therefore
Speaker 1: there's no reason to ever have them in one of
Speaker 1: his movies. That kind of thing. Anyway, in the open editorial,
Speaker 1: he did not say that, because how would be crazy? Uh. Instead,
Speaker 1: he actually said that journalists were being just as uh
Speaker 1: just as destructive as the hackers were by sharing this
Speaker 1: confidential information, that they were essentially enabling the hackers in
Speaker 1: their attack to cause damage to the company by taking
Speaker 1: that same info. He says, you know, I imagine that
Speaker 1: the hackers are sorting through that mountain of information they stole,
Speaker 1: looking for the most harmful pieces of information. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: journalists are next door doing the exact same thing with
Speaker 1: all the stuff that's been leaked. And he drew a differentiation, however,
Speaker 1: between the two. Well, yeah, I mean, he was saying
Speaker 1: that the hackers are at least doing it out of
Speaker 1: the sense of ideology, but the journalists are just doing
Speaker 1: it to make a make a nickel is essentially what
Speaker 1: I said. He actually did say make a nickel? Uh
Speaker 1: no word if he was walking and talking as he
Speaker 1: wrote this. Um, that's the only way I imagined Sorkin.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so it's an interesting point, And honestly, one
Speaker 1: of the things that's really important to me reporting on
Speaker 1: this stuff is that we're reporting on the incidents, but
Speaker 1: we're not sharing any of that information that was linked.
Speaker 1: I haven't sought it out, I haven't downloaded a in it.
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in the contents, uh Like, I'm not
Speaker 1: interested in the specifics. I'm interested in the impact. I
Speaker 1: I agree with you partially, I'm ultimately interested in the
Speaker 1: big mystery and in the final answer, the stuff about
Speaker 1: people's salaries, people's medical records, things like that. As strange
Speaker 1: as it is to say, it comes down to an
Speaker 1: issue of you know, your personal opinion of what is
Speaker 1: what is right and wrong to look at because a
Speaker 1: lot of people nowadays, with the cost of information and
Speaker 1: communication being so low, there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who will simply hoard information to collect it. You know, um,
Speaker 1: I because I would not really want anybody reading my
Speaker 1: medical It's not that I'm like secretly awarewolf or something secret. No,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty open about it. Where your like candor part
Speaker 1: on your sleeve when you when you're able to wear sleeves,
Speaker 1: when I'm able to wear sleeves indeed. But but the
Speaker 1: point is that, uh, you know, I think both you
Speaker 1: and I kind of go on a golden rule basis
Speaker 1: for this stuff. I'm very much a proponent of compassion
Speaker 1: and understanding as much as possible in general, not just
Speaker 1: in this case. But yeah, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: newsworthy that it happened. I think taking that information and
Speaker 1: actually disseminating what was inside it apart from a generalization,
Speaker 1: like you could say it was salary information without going
Speaker 1: into the details of what that salary information was. Right.
Speaker 1: So Sorkin was specifically pointing out the journalists who are
Speaker 1: sharing this information and essentially doing what the hackers wanted
Speaker 1: them to do in the first place, right, essentially making
Speaker 1: the hackers threats work. Yeah. Yeah, it's like now you
Speaker 1: guys are carrying out the second part of that plan essentially. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, on the other hand, there are some
Speaker 1: very important issues that have been talked about, like the
Speaker 1: pay disparity that clearly should be addressed. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: it's hard to just be completely like hands off on
Speaker 1: this because there are some things that have come out
Speaker 1: of this that, you know, you want to say, like,
Speaker 1: all right, some of you, some of you may be
Speaker 1: terrible people, and some of your policies may be very
Speaker 1: terrible as well, and maybe we need to take a
Speaker 1: look at that. This is not the way I would
Speaker 1: have preferred us to have this conversation. Absolutely, that's a
Speaker 1: really good point. And and uh, it's weird because although
Speaker 1: the Guardians of Peace do not directly respond, I guess
Speaker 1: to media members, we do see that they are clearly
Speaker 1: listening to. As much as I loathe the term Jonathan
Speaker 1: to the narrative. Yes, So December sixteenth, that narrative gets
Speaker 1: pushed forward with another message allegedly from Guardians of Peace
Speaker 1: that specifically mentions the interview. This is the first time
Speaker 1: the interview is mentioned by name December sixteen. November twenty
Speaker 1: four was when the attack was revealed. December sixteenth is
Speaker 1: when the interview is mentioned by name, and the message
Speaker 1: contains threats saying that if the film is allowed to
Speaker 1: run in theaters, there will be a September eleventh style
Speaker 1: terrorist attack as a response specifically against the New York
Speaker 1: theater where it would have premiered, but also uh nationwide
Speaker 1: um incidents if it were to run in local theaters.
Speaker 1: Sony ends up canceling the premiere and pulls the film
Speaker 1: from theaters, but they really pull the film for theaters
Speaker 1: after several theater chains have already said that they will
Speaker 1: not show the movie. Right, and these are the big
Speaker 1: the big names, Yeah, so these are That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: So once I mean, if if the major chains say
Speaker 1: we're not going to show your movie, then canceling it
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense. So we'll come back to that.
Speaker 1: Because Tony story about this removing of the movie and
Speaker 1: then returning the film is not totally coherent. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: and it's a charitable way to put it. So at
Speaker 1: this time people say, well, you should release it in
Speaker 1: video on demand somehow, right, or independent theaters right, And
Speaker 1: Sony says, nope, dada, We're not releasing it in any form. Now,
Speaker 1: this is an important thing to remember that Sony has
Speaker 1: said they do not want to release the movie in
Speaker 1: any format. And uh so, December seventeenth, the U. S Government,
Speaker 1: in the form mostly of the FBI, state that they
Speaker 1: believe North Korea was centrally involved in the hacking, although
Speaker 1: the FBI has not officially said that at this point,
Speaker 1: it was really a government official saying we believe that
Speaker 1: North Korea was involved. This was not when the FBI
Speaker 1: specifically came out, but on December eighteen, messages again allegedly
Speaker 1: from Guardians of Peace went to Sony executives and said
Speaker 1: that if the film was never released in any format,
Speaker 1: then Guardians of Peace would not release any more damaging
Speaker 1: information stolen in the hack. So presumably they still had
Speaker 1: some that was at least as damaging as the mountain
Speaker 1: of stuff they had already released, but they were holding
Speaker 1: it in check. And if that movie didn't come out
Speaker 1: at all, it would never see the light of day.
Speaker 1: But a second message on the web application paste band,
Speaker 1: that's the one I was talking about. That text, it's
Speaker 1: supposedly also was from Guardians of Peace and had a
Speaker 1: different message in it, saying that Sony had suffered enough
Speaker 1: and the company could release the movie if Kim Jong
Speaker 1: UN's death wasn't quote too happy, And I guess that
Speaker 1: if it wasn't like a big emotionally uplifting moment in
Speaker 1: the film, like you weren't supposed to stand up and
Speaker 1: cheer and go yea when Kim jong un dies, and
Speaker 1: that would be okay. I feel fairly confident and saying
Speaker 1: that this is not the same group, or at least
Speaker 1: it's not a group representing North Korea, because that seems
Speaker 1: completely antithetical to everything else that's been said. It's even
Speaker 1: antithetical to the other message that was released that very day,
Speaker 1: Like one message says, never released the movie and we'll stop,
Speaker 1: and the other message says, go ahead and release the
Speaker 1: movie as long as it's not celebrating the death of
Speaker 1: Kim jongoon, then you you've suffered enough and you've learned
Speaker 1: your Lesson. Clearly, these can't be the same people unless
Speaker 1: they're just message with Sony. In that case that it
Speaker 1: could be the same people, but now they're cruel mischief makers.
Speaker 1: Now there's one other thing though, that's that's a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal that was unearthed during the leaks of the
Speaker 1: Sony hats. Yeah, this is one that has become a
Speaker 1: separate issue all on its own, and it's one that
Speaker 1: I would really need to look into further to to
Speaker 1: do a full rundown on it. But in the future
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, I've been trying to give it
Speaker 1: some more space so I can get more information on it.
Speaker 1: But this was where we also saw as part of
Speaker 1: the leaked information that came out that there was this
Speaker 1: um kind of a conspiracy really among movie studios about
Speaker 1: Project Goliath, which everyone is pretty sure means Google and
Speaker 1: Google in the m p a A, the Motion Picture
Speaker 1: Association of America ended up having some um some very
Speaker 1: public spats about the information contained in the leak regarding
Speaker 1: Project Goliath, Google, saying that the m p A was
Speaker 1: essentially trying to reinstate policies that were under the SOAPA
Speaker 1: umbrella but had been defeated because SOAPA was not adopted. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the m p a A Is saying Google being talking
Speaker 1: about self as a champion of free speech is a joke.
Speaker 1: It got brutal. Uh yeah, very ugly. It's definitely worth
Speaker 1: looking further into, but we won't. You know, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to mention it because again, it's like, that's not
Speaker 1: that this story wasn't big enough, but other big stories
Speaker 1: came up to like because of it. December nineteenth, that's
Speaker 1: when the FBI announces it has connected the North Korean
Speaker 1: government to the attacks, citing unreleased evidence as well as
Speaker 1: clues such as hacking tools that have been used by
Speaker 1: North Korean hackers in the past. They also cite that
Speaker 1: the attacks seemed to originate from IP addresses within North Korea,
Speaker 1: and later stated that they believed it would have been
Speaker 1: really difficult for anyone else to have used or spoofed
Speaker 1: those particular IP addresses. Is my favorite part coming up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then North Korea says it was not involved in
Speaker 1: the hacks, but praises the hackers as sympathizers and that
Speaker 1: the hack was quote a righteous deed unquote. They basically said,
Speaker 1: we didn't do it, but we should have Yeah, I
Speaker 1: like that they say it was a righteous deed, but
Speaker 1: I like to think of him saying it was a
Speaker 1: righteous deed, you know, like kind of Surfer de mutant
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles version of righteous. I don't know how popular
Speaker 1: Hawaiian shirts are there, but that would have been good,
Speaker 1: good costume. If they're really popular, then I've got my
Speaker 1: wardrobe should I ever visit North Korea, I've got a
Speaker 1: ton of those. President Obama also on December nineteenth, spoke
Speaker 1: out about the hack and said he felt that Sony
Speaker 1: made a mistake pulling the movie from theaters, and also
Speaker 1: said that the US would respond proportionately to the attack.
Speaker 1: What that specifically meant, no one was really sure at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, I've even gotta I forgot to put
Speaker 1: the note in, but I'll mention it when we get
Speaker 1: a little further in about the something that happened in
Speaker 1: North Korea that some wonder perhaps was the proportionate attack.
Speaker 1: We don't write the response now that that same day,
Speaker 1: Sony came out and this is where the this is
Speaker 1: where their message evolves. Yeah, evolves is good. Changes makes
Speaker 1: a degree turn. So this is the CEO Michael Lynton
Speaker 1: came out and said that the decision to cancel the
Speaker 1: film was merely in response to theater's refusing to show it,
Speaker 1: and not a sign that the company was bowing to
Speaker 1: terrorist threats. If that's the case, I don't know why
Speaker 1: they refused to release it in any format. If they
Speaker 1: said we're never releasing this movie. Ever, how could that
Speaker 1: be only because the theaters refused to show it, Because
Speaker 1: you would assume that the company wouldn't want to just
Speaker 1: eat the expenses of producing and marketing a film. Gigantic
Speaker 1: expenses not many millions of dollars, So if you want
Speaker 1: to recapture at least some of that, you could release
Speaker 1: it online. I mean, if you're truly not scared of
Speaker 1: the threats, then why not why not release it online?
Speaker 1: Or allow independent theaters that say, look, we'll still show it.
Speaker 1: Why not allow them to do it? And that was
Speaker 1: that was the thing is that this response to me
Speaker 1: did not ring true because the actions that Sony had
Speaker 1: taken just a couple of days earlier, U spoke very
Speaker 1: differently than what they were saying. However, of course, they
Speaker 1: want to save face. They want to say, hey, we
Speaker 1: weren't scared. It's just that there was no place to
Speaker 1: show it, so that's why we pulled it, which is
Speaker 1: patently else because there were several in the city of
Speaker 1: Atlanta that was ready to show it. Uh. There are
Speaker 1: two theaters in general that are specific, rather too specific
Speaker 1: theaters that said they wanted to show the film. One
Speaker 1: is in Atlanta called the Plaza, which is just down
Speaker 1: the street from where I live. Independent theater, yeah, a
Speaker 1: little tiny independent theater. Uh, and they said we'll show it.
Speaker 1: And then there was the other one in Texas, Alamo Drafthouse.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, which are which are too um unforeseen
Speaker 1: champions there. We we do know though. This is another
Speaker 1: thing that's really interesting to me because all this stuff
Speaker 1: takes place after you and I and Matt did the
Speaker 1: earlier show. So what happens on December twenty That's when
Speaker 1: North Korea offers to take part in a joint investigation
Speaker 1: of the hack and the U. S Government declines. So
Speaker 1: North Korea says, hey, we weren't responsible, but we will
Speaker 1: totally help you try and track down who was responsible
Speaker 1: for this thing that we approve of but totally didn't do.
Speaker 1: And the United States said, Uh, here's what's interesting to
Speaker 1: mean though, if North Korea is telling the truth, right,
Speaker 1: and if they were in no way involved in that hack, right,
Speaker 1: this this uh, these bits of code that somehow could
Speaker 1: have come from them. I'm wondering if maybe maybe their
Speaker 1: willingness to investigate was seen as uh disingenuous. Maybe they
Speaker 1: were looking to find out how their how their work
Speaker 1: got out there, how he got found, or maybe they were.
Speaker 1: It could also possibly be that North Korea is saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't um, we didn't allow for this
Speaker 1: to happen. We didn't, we didn't designate someone to go
Speaker 1: and do this on our behalf. We would like to
Speaker 1: track down the person responsible for reasons of our own right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Or it could be that they totally did it, and
Speaker 1: that's one thing that we should point out, Like I
Speaker 1: have pretty strong skepticism about this, but they totally could
Speaker 1: have done it. Right now, it's just not enough information.
Speaker 1: We'll get to we'll get to the biggest, the biggest
Speaker 1: problem in the information gap here pretty soon, I think.
Speaker 1: But then on that same day, December twentie that's when
Speaker 1: North Korea also warned that there would be serious consequences
Speaker 1: should the United States attack North Korea if this retaliation
Speaker 1: were to happen, right, whatever that would be. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: essentially like whatever proportionate response you're thinking of, better not
Speaker 1: be against us, because boy haality, we will we And
Speaker 1: and they were very like, very militant, not big surprise,
Speaker 1: I mean North Korea, very angry. North Korea has got
Speaker 1: a long history of of you know, beating the drama
Speaker 1: and saying that they will take severe action without backing
Speaker 1: it up. That you would ever want them to back
Speaker 1: it up. But the United States and North Korea remember
Speaker 1: still technically in a ceasefire with the war that never ended. Yes,
Speaker 1: North Korea has never acknowledge the end of the war.
Speaker 1: So December twenty three, Sony would authorize three theaters to
Speaker 1: show the interview on Christmas Day, and they also released
Speaker 1: the film to streaming options late on the Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1: And there were no further attacks. Despite that fact that
Speaker 1: you know, you had those messages earlier saying that if
Speaker 1: you ever show this, we will attack more, there weren't
Speaker 1: any There were no real life violent consequences. December seven,
Speaker 1: North Korea condemns the release of the film, and they're
Speaker 1: real jerks about it. They used a racially insensitive term
Speaker 1: to describe our president, which was pretty ugly and I
Speaker 1: got a lot of people up in arms. But I
Speaker 1: mean the most important thing is obviously that there wasn't
Speaker 1: any kind of physical retaliation for the release of the movie.
Speaker 1: It was just a really nasty worded message from people
Speaker 1: who were upset about it. Well and the film itself.
Speaker 1: Of course, given we talked about this a little bit,
Speaker 1: but given the political environment and ideology of the Democratic
Speaker 1: People's Republic of Career North Korea, this is this is
Speaker 1: a profoundly offensive thing. It's it's similar to a film
Speaker 1: that came out featuring Mohammed from you know, from the
Speaker 1: Muslim faith, uh, which depicting Mohammed is already supposed to
Speaker 1: be a profound defense, and then having him killed. It's
Speaker 1: similar to that because of the deification of the leadership
Speaker 1: of North Korea. Sure, yeah, it's it's it's a very
Speaker 1: much a kind of divine right sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good phrase, and so a nastily worded statement,
Speaker 1: uh with with added racism, I guess, just to make
Speaker 1: it really pop, is uh the least you could expect.
Speaker 1: Ye Uh. Sony also has threatened media companies that are
Speaker 1: covering the hack with legal action saying they will sue
Speaker 1: companies that specifically companies that are sharing the leaked information.
Speaker 1: I mean, reporting on something is one thing. Obviously, Sony
Speaker 1: suing a company for reporting on the story would be
Speaker 1: pretty difficult to win. I mean, you know, no one
Speaker 1: wants to get sued. It's an expensive endeavor. But you know,
Speaker 1: most most media outlets are going to say, like, well,
Speaker 1: we're just covering the news. This is news, and that's
Speaker 1: what we do. A government, you can't claim that this
Speaker 1: is a national security issue. Yeah. Now if if in
Speaker 1: fact they were releasing private like corporate secrets that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, then you get into sort of a murky ground.
Speaker 1: And I can see why Sony definitely wanted to to
Speaker 1: try and cut down on people sharing this information and
Speaker 1: disseminating it further, which is another reason why I report
Speaker 1: about the story but not go into it. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: not always altruistic. Now, there's one other thing you that
Speaker 1: you were going to mention as well about this, which
Speaker 1: is something funny happened in North Korea's internet. Yeah, their
Speaker 1: internet um had a real slow down and eventually just
Speaker 1: a complete halt of operations in late December, and there
Speaker 1: was some question about whether or not that was in
Speaker 1: fact the proportionate response that the United States was going
Speaker 1: to take against whomever perpetrated the hack um and we
Speaker 1: don't know. We don't know if it was. In fact.
Speaker 1: There's so few nodes in North Korea, and it's all
Speaker 1: stuff that the government and military can have access to,
Speaker 1: but no one else outside of those organizations has access
Speaker 1: to the Internet. So but those those nodes that all
Speaker 1: the connections were essentially shut down, like the Internet went
Speaker 1: dark in North Korea. It led some people to wonder
Speaker 1: if perhaps there was an attack, if it was a
Speaker 1: state sponsored attack like the United States proportionate response, if
Speaker 1: that was it, or if it was just as an
Speaker 1: example of infrastructure breaking down, which could have been the case.
Speaker 1: It could have been that it was as simple as
Speaker 1: someone needed to go and reboot a machine in order
Speaker 1: for it to reconnect to the Internet at large. So uh,
Speaker 1: there just wasn't any answer to that. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: you had a lot of speculation around it, but since
Speaker 1: there's not enough information, I don't want to speculate right
Speaker 1: the We're just saying that the issue of antiquated or
Speaker 1: malfunctioning equipment is at least as likely a culprit as
Speaker 1: a state sponsored attack, if not more likely in my opinion.
Speaker 1: But so happy New Year, Sony. You made it to
Speaker 1: uh the and that's January second. There's a funny thing, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you and I have talked about this off air before,
Speaker 1: but there's this funny way that stories drop. Uh, some
Speaker 1: big stories drop on Friday afternoon. Listeners will recall that
Speaker 1: January two was a Friday. There's a great subreddit about
Speaker 1: important news that drops on Friday. Yeah. The hope that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of companies that will released like
Speaker 1: unpleasant news on a Friday, hoping that it just gets
Speaker 1: buried and then by the time everyone's ready to talk
Speaker 1: about it again on Monday, it's old news, so no
Speaker 1: one talks about it, right, Yeah, exactly, And so this is, uh,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty big Friday to drop some disappearing
Speaker 1: news because it's the day after New Year's Day. Everyone's hungover,
Speaker 1: no one can no one can remember what their name is,
Speaker 1: let alone read a press release right right, And like,
Speaker 1: you don't drink, and you're probably just hungover from having
Speaker 1: to deal with all the people drinking. It's mostly made
Speaker 1: dealing with the immense frustration of all my drunk friends
Speaker 1: who are who are texting me as they're like, dude,
Speaker 1: did I call you last night? And if I did,
Speaker 1: don't remember the things I said? Check the message. Yes
Speaker 1: you know your your co host Matt Frederick has done
Speaker 1: that to me. At one thirty in the morning, I
Speaker 1: got a call from him. That was a few years
Speaker 1: ago though that was not this year. That was in
Speaker 1: his checkered past. So here's what happens. On January second.
Speaker 1: The White House announces a new round of sanctions on
Speaker 1: North Korea, and they do this via executive order. Uh.
Speaker 1: We've got a quotation here, uh, which we should say
Speaker 1: also that as the US is releasing these new sanctions
Speaker 1: of people are already raising um skeptical concern about this
Speaker 1: North Korea allegation. And they're saying, you know, the FBI
Speaker 1: or the CIA or the rest of the alphabet soup
Speaker 1: seems convinced that North Korea was involved. And they're saying
Speaker 1: that due to information we have, we know it was
Speaker 1: North Korea. And people are saying, but how and why
Speaker 1: what is this information that you have that is such
Speaker 1: a convincing smoking gun, right, And uh, they that's why
Speaker 1: we've got the exact quotation of why they are sanctioning this, Uh,
Speaker 1: if if you could probably do a better voice to
Speaker 1: the response. So, it's a response to ongoing provocative, destabilizing,
Speaker 1: and repressive actions and policies. Particularly it's destructive and coercive
Speaker 1: cyber attacks on Sony Pictures Entertainment. So specifically, not not
Speaker 1: just specifically cyber crime, but specifically Sony Pictures Entertainment. They're saying,
Speaker 1: not only do we think he did it, this is
Speaker 1: our official response to that. Yeah. So in this case,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's essentially saying, like cases closed, guys, this
Speaker 1: is they did it. And uh, we're gonna kind of
Speaker 1: segue into sort of the skepticism about this, including my
Speaker 1: own personal skepticism, but I want to preface it with saying,
Speaker 1: and we said this on on the stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know episode as well, that this is
Speaker 1: based upon the information that we have available to us.
Speaker 1: And it could be that the US government hasn't its
Speaker 1: possession information that is damning evidence that proves that North
Speaker 1: Rhea's government was in fact behind the attacks. Uh, And
Speaker 1: it's just that we don't have access to that information,
Speaker 1: and therefore that's why things look a little hokey to us. Uh.
Speaker 1: That being said, things look a little hokey to us.
Speaker 1: How so what what are some of the points that
Speaker 1: make this not an iron clad theory? All right? So, first,
Speaker 1: it's odd to have a state sponsored attack where you
Speaker 1: have a hacker group claiming responsibility and giving itself a
Speaker 1: cool name. Yes. So so having a group come out
Speaker 1: and say, hey, we're guardians of peace. Were the ones
Speaker 1: who did this, this is the reason we did it,
Speaker 1: here's how you can stop it from happening, is a
Speaker 1: lot different from a state sponsored attack. A state sponsored
Speaker 1: attack usually one thing is they don't want to leave
Speaker 1: any trace of who it was that did it. You know,
Speaker 1: this is if you remember the episodes we've done about
Speaker 1: stuck s net, then you know this is the case.
Speaker 1: Like you want, you want to have the effect without
Speaker 1: having it be autographed, you know, love North Korea. Next,
Speaker 1: the amount of data stolen was huge, so we mentioned
Speaker 1: this earlier. It takes a really long time to siphon
Speaker 1: off a hundred terabytes of data, particularly if you're not
Speaker 1: on site. So that is an enormous undertaking. It's not impossible,
Speaker 1: it is something that could happen, but it would take months. Well,
Speaker 1: it would suggest to me that if in fact this
Speaker 1: is North Korea that's behind it, that they targeted Sony
Speaker 1: essentially sometime mid two thousand and fourteen for a movie
Speaker 1: that wasn't going to come out for six months at
Speaker 1: the latest, because that's how long it's going to take
Speaker 1: to steal that much information. Also, that they were able
Speaker 1: to identify the information that would be most harmful to
Speaker 1: the company, target it, take it, and not ever be noticed.
Speaker 1: Now granted, when they're taking it, they're making copies. It's
Speaker 1: not like stealing from a store where suddenly there's there's
Speaker 1: an empty space where a TV used to be, right,
Speaker 1: So it's a little different from physical theft, but still
Speaker 1: you could end up being caught, you know, you could
Speaker 1: at lead people could see unusual traffic in the Internet servers,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um, so it's unusual. Also the
Speaker 1: fact that the information that was released to harm the
Speaker 1: company was incredibly savvy, like this speaks of someone who
Speaker 1: has a real understanding of what is going to make
Speaker 1: a company, specifically a media company vulnerable. Matter right, how
Speaker 1: do I strike at the morale of the employees, how
Speaker 1: do I strike at the relationship between the production company
Speaker 1: and the other big players in the industry, how do
Speaker 1: I strike at the American public's perception of that company.
Speaker 1: This is incredibly savvy stuff. Not to say that there
Speaker 1: are there aren't people in North Korea who are aware
Speaker 1: of this. They very well maybe, but it seems to
Speaker 1: me like it's a real in cider's insight to what
Speaker 1: is important within the film industry in general and Sony
Speaker 1: in particular. That's a nice turn of phrase. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a little clunky myself, but okay. Also, the threats
Speaker 1: to obey the hackers had nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: interview for a really long time, like, so essentially they
Speaker 1: were saying, obey us, do what we say, but they
Speaker 1: weren't saying They weren't giving instructions, Like, they didn't give
Speaker 1: Sony the chance to pull the interview. It was only
Speaker 1: after leaking the information that the demand was even made.
Speaker 1: So it's really odd that if the interview was in
Speaker 1: fact the reason for the attack, and if the goal
Speaker 1: of the attack was to have the interview pulled from
Speaker 1: film from theaters, why not actually give the company a
Speaker 1: chance to do that rather than just slash and burn
Speaker 1: because the film was released anyway, yeah to me. That's
Speaker 1: that's one of the most important parts. Let alone the
Speaker 1: fact that UH states don't typically attack other states for
Speaker 1: media like private films, you know, private sector films. UH.
Speaker 1: We've already talked about. You know something that ties into
Speaker 1: that earlier point you just made, which is, UH, how
Speaker 1: to attribute who said what? Yeah? How do you How
Speaker 1: can you be sure that a message supposedly from the
Speaker 1: hackers was actually from the hackers? And you can't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you might as well sit there
Speaker 1: and go to four chan and try and say this
Speaker 1: particular message was from this particular person. It's all supposed
Speaker 1: to be anonymously protected, so you don't know. Also, security
Speaker 1: firm Norse identified six former Sony employees who had the
Speaker 1: skills necessary to pull off something like this and had
Speaker 1: participated in chat room discussions revealing their negative feelings towards
Speaker 1: the company, which wasn't anything incriminating, but they were clearly disgruntled.
Speaker 1: They were former employees, they were part of a layoff
Speaker 1: that happened in two thousand fourteen. UM and the FBI
Speaker 1: rejected this information, which is interesting because one other thing
Speaker 1: that I believe it was NORSE found when North submitted
Speaker 1: their stuff to the FBI. They they are big proponents
Speaker 1: of this insider job argument because within the code they
Speaker 1: found the credentials that you would need to access some
Speaker 1: of these uh some of these compartmentalized basis of information, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seemed to a lot of cybersecurity experts that whomever
Speaker 1: pulled off this attack had access to passwords and other
Speaker 1: verification UH criteria that would allow them access to these
Speaker 1: very sensitive areas of information that would be challenging for
Speaker 1: an outsider to identify and use. But if you're if
Speaker 1: you were familiar with the system already, then you would
Speaker 1: know what you needed before you did your attack. So
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things where you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not impossible for someone outside the group to have
Speaker 1: figured this out, but it's far more likely that there
Speaker 1: was at least some insider assistance because you know, they
Speaker 1: were able to target specific pieces of information. And perhaps
Speaker 1: it's unwitting insider assistance too. It could be, you know,
Speaker 1: it could just very well be a case of social
Speaker 1: engineering where UH, an outside hacker gets unwitting participation and
Speaker 1: the people who handed over the information or the the
Speaker 1: access the keys to the Kingdom weren't aware of what
Speaker 1: they were doing at the time, that's possible. Um, I
Speaker 1: still think that the insider hypothesis is the most compelling
Speaker 1: based upon what was stolen, how it was leaked, and
Speaker 1: the effect it had. But and also the fact that
Speaker 1: the demand for the film thing didn't come until after
Speaker 1: the leaks had happened. But again that's that's just based
Speaker 1: on the information have available to me. So what do
Speaker 1: you think then about one of the early things presented
Speaker 1: as smoking gun evidence the idea that uh, certain pieces
Speaker 1: of code that have been used in the attacks were
Speaker 1: present in these most recent attacks. Well, Ben, as you
Speaker 1: and I know, on the internet, um, all code is
Speaker 1: incredibly proprietary and can't be spread around or tweaked or
Speaker 1: changed or altered or added to or taken away from.
Speaker 1: I mean, if only we lived in a world where
Speaker 1: you could take existing programs, change them and make them
Speaker 1: do things for your on your own behalf, then we
Speaker 1: would live in a world where you can't attribute a
Speaker 1: source for a particular attack simply because of the code
Speaker 1: that was Oh wait, that is the world we live in.
Speaker 1: So yeah, here's the problem is that just because the
Speaker 1: code was found in attacks from a previous instance doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that that code only belongs to one group. A
Speaker 1: lot of these tools get to be through various channels
Speaker 1: online hackers. When they create a really powerful tool, sometimes
Speaker 1: they love to share it. Not all the time. Some
Speaker 1: of them are very jealous with what they create and
Speaker 1: they keep it for themselves. But some will go and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I made this tool, it's perfect for cracking passwords. Have
Speaker 1: at it. And then the people who downloaded and use it,
Speaker 1: we often call them script kiddies. They aren't the ones
Speaker 1: who developed the code. They're just making use of code
Speaker 1: that was built to do a specific thing. So I
Speaker 1: hesitate to attribute an attack to us specific group simply
Speaker 1: because the code that was included. Yeah, I agree with
Speaker 1: you there, because it's strange too. It's strange to think
Speaker 1: that someone could own a process, and especially when there's
Speaker 1: so much sharing in the toolbox. And uh, if this
Speaker 1: code was recognized right then, that already inherently tells us
Speaker 1: that other people have seen it, which also means they
Speaker 1: could replicate it. It would be I think it's a
Speaker 1: little bit movie thriller right now to say, uh that
Speaker 1: someone purposely put it in his red herring but wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be cool? No, I just think it's also movie
Speaker 1: thriller to say I recognize this code if it could
Speaker 1: only come from one place, and that's totally a movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and you're right about that. And one thing that
Speaker 1: we should also list that I think is important to
Speaker 1: note here is that I've seen several journalists UM reciting
Speaker 1: these u S statements of North Korean involvement as fact,
Speaker 1: and it is true. The problem with this is something
Speaker 1: that you and I have have touched upon already in
Speaker 1: the show, which is that we know that the United
Speaker 1: States and some of its cooperative countries have this vast
Speaker 1: array of sophisticated and in many plate cases classify UH
Speaker 1: collection methods, right sure, And this means that it is
Speaker 1: fair to assume that the United States has access to
Speaker 1: information that civilians and journalists may not be able to analyze.
Speaker 1: Right So so yeah, that leads you to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that again, there could be a smoking gun sure that
Speaker 1: I am completely unaware of that says no, it was
Speaker 1: North Korea. It was not some insider. Uh, it was not.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a disgruntled employee. This was a very effective attack,
Speaker 1: which if that is here's the thing. If that's the
Speaker 1: real answer, if that really is the real answer, that's terrifying,
Speaker 1: because not only does it mean that you have a
Speaker 1: country that has created an incredibly effective, invasive attack into
Speaker 1: a major corporation, but they understand the culture and the
Speaker 1: impact that corporation has and how to best attack it. It
Speaker 1: It just doesn't make sense though to do so. I
Speaker 1: would be surprised to do something of that magnitude for
Speaker 1: a work of fiction that honestly, honestly, and I say
Speaker 1: this as as a fan of Seth Rogan, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not going to be his Oscar winning film. I
Speaker 1: had said that. Um when Sony first pulled the film,
Speaker 1: I said, listen, I don't plan to see the interview,
Speaker 1: but I want that to be my option that I
Speaker 1: don't see the interview, right, you want it to be
Speaker 1: your choice. I don't don't want the choice made for
Speaker 1: me that I don't see the interview. And see, that's
Speaker 1: the thing is that they released it, and again we
Speaker 1: didn't see more attacks, at least not yet. I mean,
Speaker 1: it could be by the time this podcast goes out
Speaker 1: that in fact, more has developed the story, which we
Speaker 1: do have to be conscious of but going back to
Speaker 1: that point of the missing information, this also means that
Speaker 1: without access to it, there's no way for someone to
Speaker 1: independently verify the accuracy of the statements on the part
Speaker 1: of Uncle Sam, and it's been it's being used as
Speaker 1: the proof, and the fact that their further sanctions really
Speaker 1: does show I think it indicates that there is some
Speaker 1: sort of belief. Yeah. Yeah, I I am at least
Speaker 1: hopeful that they are sincere in the statement that they
Speaker 1: fully believe North Korea to be behind it, because otherwise
Speaker 1: we're talking about a very bizarre clancy like thriller, where
Speaker 1: the US government is taking advantage of an insane hacking
Speaker 1: attack on a media company as an excuse to step
Speaker 1: up sanctions against a hostile foreign power, which is such
Speaker 1: a weird thing to even say. But what I love
Speaker 1: about the plan is that it's so straightforward. Right, step
Speaker 1: three profit. Yeah. So, so where does this leave us, Well,
Speaker 1: it pretty much leaves us in the same place we
Speaker 1: were at the beginning. We don't really know you, and
Speaker 1: I certainly don't know who. Yeah, and it may very
Speaker 1: well be we said that in fact it is North Korea,
Speaker 1: and it's just that that's such it's it stretches my
Speaker 1: belief so much. That's why I really have trouble with it.
Speaker 1: But it could very well be true. I'm curious what
Speaker 1: our listeners think. Guys, if you have any suggestions, If
Speaker 1: you if you have an opinion on this, or you
Speaker 1: have a suggestion for a future episode, you should write
Speaker 1: in the addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: They handle it's tech stuff hs W ben Where can
Speaker 1: they find you? Ah? Yes, well you can find Jonathan
Speaker 1: and I hanging out on several shows where I'm brain
Speaker 1: Stuff together on YouTube and What the Stuff. We've got
Speaker 1: an upcoming episode of brain Stuff. Where were we both
Speaker 1: appear in the same episode? Oh, we do. Only one
Speaker 1: of us talks and that's why. Yeah, you know on
Speaker 1: on that is What the Stuff. I believe it's uh,
Speaker 1: it is What the Stuff technology spoilers. My bad, it's
Speaker 1: it's that. That was a strange shoot. I hope listen
Speaker 1: is enjoy. You can find my co host Matt and
Speaker 1: I on stuff they don't want you to know. You
Speaker 1: can find uh a former guest host or recurring guest
Speaker 1: host of tech Stuff, Scott Benjamin, who works works with
Speaker 1: me on car stuff next to me. Yeah, yeah, he does.
Speaker 1: You guys have some of the most interesting conversations in
Speaker 1: the office. Yeah, you know Scott. I was peg Scott
Speaker 1: as the super quiet guy in the office, but he
Speaker 1: really does enjoy a fun, bizarre, thoughtful conversation. He's a
Speaker 1: big true crime fan too, by the way. That's good
Speaker 1: to know. It's good to know. It's more more risks
Speaker 1: for the mill my friend. Uh. And if somebody, if
Speaker 1: somebody wants to learn more about let's see the future
Speaker 1: of technology and they haven't heard of your other show,
Speaker 1: where would they go, Well, they would go to fw
Speaker 1: thinking dot com for Forward Thinking. That's where Lauren Vogelbaum,
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and I will end up talking at nauseum
Speaker 1: about all sorts of things from the future. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: also the video series Forward Thinking. I the soul host
Speaker 1: of that show and sometimes the writer. Uh. But you
Speaker 1: should definitely check that out. If you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: that podcast, you've got to check out the episodes that
Speaker 1: just went live so you can find them. In the
Speaker 1: most recent ones, we did Back to Back to the
Speaker 1: Future to part one, and then we did Back to
Speaker 1: Back to the Future, to part two, where we looked
Speaker 1: at the technology that Marty McFly encounters when he travels
Speaker 1: to two thousand fifteen and see how it measures up
Speaker 1: to the actual two thousand fifteen technology of today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder if they're ever going to come out with
Speaker 1: that Pepsi can Pepsi bottle. I can tell you that
Speaker 1: the power laces are going to happen this year. Finally,
Speaker 1: Nike's gonna bring us power laces sometime in twent to
Speaker 1: hear more check out that show. Yeah, and thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having me back on, Jonathan. I look forward
Speaker 1: to seeing how this situation develops, and I do hope
Speaker 1: we get an answer. Yeah, me too. I mean, this
Speaker 1: could be one of the great mysteries where you know,
Speaker 1: we have an official word, but there may always be
Speaker 1: lingering down. I'm not normally a conspiracy theory guy. It's
Speaker 1: just sometimes there are things like, you know, you like,
Speaker 1: this just doesn't smell right, and it could very well
Speaker 1: be that just a stinky, stinky mess. So anyway, thanks
Speaker 1: again guys for listening, and we will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it have toff works dot com,