Cyber-Threats
December 27, 2014 at 19:00
Posted by inss
Written by: Gabi Siboni, David Siman-Tov
The announcement by Sony Pictures that it would not
release The Interview for screening in major US theaters as
planned was the culmination of a series of events that featured elements of
cyber warfare and psychological warfare, and threatened to spill over into
physical terrorism. One of the unfortunate conclusions arising from this incident
is the emerging trend of exploiting cyberspace capabilities for the sake of
political extortion. The implications are liable to exceed the limits of free
speech. The incident thus demonstrates the realization of a threat imagined in
the past, in which cyberspace becomes yet another battleground among the
nations of the world.
The announcement by Sony Pictures that it would not
release The Interview for screening in major US theaters as
planned was the culmination of a series of events that featured elements of
cyber warfare and psychological warfare, and threatened to spill over into
physical terrorism. The incident occurred where the worlds of policy and of
culture converge, namely, politics. The implication of this extraordinary
affair goes far beyond a North Korean conflict with Sony and the United States;
it even goes beyond economics, though the wave of attacks caused the Sony
Corporation tremendous financial losses in addition to the direct damage
resulting from the decision not to distribute the movie. At stake is a
fundamental value of the West in general and the United States in particular –
the right of free speech.
The purpose of the attack, attributed to North Korea,
was to deter Sony Pictures from releasing the movie, which was understood
(correctly) as ridiculing that country’s dictator and portraying the North
Korean regime and its leader, Kim Jong-Un, with sarcasm and mockery. At first,
North Korea reacted via diplomatic channels in an attempt to prevent the
movie’s distribution and screening. It subsequently announced that as far as it
was concerned, screening the movie was a declaration of war that would not be
ignored or tolerated. Under pressure, Sony altered the script in an effort to
lessen the scorn, but Pyongyang was not mollified. As the production of the
movie progressed and reached the point of distribution, Sony became the target
of a wave of cyberattacks that climaxed when personal data of company
employees, such as salaries, Social Security numbers, and emails were made public;
company servers and computers were hacked, interrupting work at the company for
about a week; and scripts and various versions of new movies in production at
Sony were leaked to the internet.
The attacks were most likely carried out by a group of
hackers calling themselves the Guardians of Peace. Although North Korea is an
isolated nation with little internet access, it is believed to have highly
developed cyber capabilities. Indeed, the attack against Sony supports that
assessment of the nation’s cyberspace know-how, already demonstrated in
cyberattacks against South Korea, for example…
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