Norks: FBI's Sony Pictures' hacking allegations are 'groundless slander' "Grave consequences" have been threatened by North Korea, after the FBI alleged on Friday that Norks were behind the savage hack of struggling film studio Sony Pictures. The Kim Jong Un-led country demanded a joint investigation with the US to further probe the incident. North Korea has denied responsibility for the massive …
The difference between Team America and The Interview is that Team America was a parody of all countries involved. "We have no intelligence repeat we have no intelligence" - best most truest line in the whole film.
Furthermore, the team behind Team America are far more talented with the whit and the satire than the team behind The Interview could ever dream of being.
It's all well and good the FBI now saying (after they initially suspected North Korea) they have the evidence, but I refuse to believe a country that maintains Pizza is a vegetable and that JFK was shot dead by Lee Harvey Oswald*.
*Before the down votes commence, look at the video and the photos of JFK after. Oswald was behind him, but the wound on JFK indicate he was shot from the front.
Saw a documentary a few months back that looked into the JFK shooting and came up with some 'interesting' details.
The Secret Services detail where on the piss the night before except for on guy (the newbie on the team) who had wash the cars in the morning.
The 'shot' from the position that Owald was in, the distance, moving target etc., was nigh on immpossible even for ex army snipers - they demostated the set up and the sniper only hit 2 out of 10 attempts.
The consulion was that when Oswald opened fire, the secret service went into panic mode, and one of them from the car following, acidently fired as the car he jumped onto accelatrated and hit JFK.
I'm not into tin-foil hats, but it was an interesting documentarty.
Telegraph article, you have the gutts to link to a telegraph article on here ???
OK, then ...
Read that article again. They have one guy, who does not like the Norks, claim they did not have enough cash last time they came round to his shop ... that same person has also claimed he saw them in a car boot sale. The exact same person has also been demonstrating against NK.
I guess you will agree, not the best witness/source you could dream of, here, mate, right ?
The verification of said story has been poor as well - they ask some guy in the know ... who confirms they are not well paid, well off etc. Which is undoubtedly the case, however, does not at all verify the claims of the shopkeeper.
The worst part ? The traffic fines ... "the embassy in London has accrued more than £200,000 worth of unpaid traffic-related fines" - that is true for most/all embassies in London, similar in France and Germany as well for the simple fact that CD's do not have to pay traffic, parking, etc fines. The fines accumulate over the years ... Saudi Arabia representation probably has 10x that number in unpaid traffic fines.
This whole article smells of poorly researched BS.
"We cannot have a society in which some dictators someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States."
Yet Obama's society grants foreign terrorists a proxy of dictatorship over basic rights to dignity at US airports, where citizens are processed like criminals: ordered to strip, or to be scanned to the flesh.
I'm finding the sabre-rattling from the US a little disturbing. The decision of theatre-owners not to show the film seems sensible (and quite possibly insurance-driven). The chances seem pretty small of NK being able to mount a physical attack, but what if you're wrong? Might chance it if I were a theatre-owner in Arsendofnowhereville, Ohio (But with very prominent "at your own risk" signs just in case) as you'd clean up if you sold US flags; "I survived the interview" t-shirts; and similar stuff on the way out. No way in hell would I chance it if it was a theatre -say- in Times Square or somewhere touristy.
Also, Xmas Day release...symbolic in a number of ways; and a successful terrorist attack then would get all the publicity any terrorist could ever want.
I don't really blame the theatre-owners too much...the pot isn't that big (fuller houses for a little while, plus a bit of mechandise) and the stakes are high (preventable deaths if you spin the wheel and you're wrong). By all accounts the film isn't all that anyway.
I don't really blame Sony -a Japanese-owned company- for yanking the release...nowhere to show the film, plus the preventable death thing, plus they are still being blackmailed. When you have them by the bollocks, their hearts and minds will follow; as the saying goes.
Where I'm getting the disconnect is all this "a blow against US freedom" cobblers. It's a blow against *Sony's* freedom, right enough, but they're Japanese; therefore foreign and don't count (going by the rest of US foreign policy). So the US gets to see a (reputedly) crap film a little later than originally planned and a reasonable response to that is bombing an entire nation into a glass car park, if the online opinions are anything to go by.
America, you are spoiled rotten. Go to bed this minute, and tidy up your room while you're up there.
Also imagine the headlines if Sony and the cinemas decided to go with showing the film. Let's say there was some terrorist activity. It would basically mean that everyone will blame Sony and the cinema for showing the film and allowing this to take place. I wonder what the US government will do then? Would they blame the cinema for showing the film? Or would they talk about "freedom of speech" through their backsides?
Remember, this is the same country that supported the current Egyptian regime to remove a democratically elected government and to install a military dictator who has freed the previous dictator. So, the United States talking about freedom is a bit rich.
I don't really blame Sony[...] for yanking the release...nowhere to show the film
I think Sony can be blamed for pulling the release - they could have released it in the expectation that nobody would show it. Their claim from the article that "as no theatre would screen it we can't release it" doesn't hold up.
As it is they've got good publicity out of a bad film, without even having to show it. They don't even have to engage in "Hollywood accounting" in order to use as a loss for tax purposes...
And do people really believe that North Korea, a country that clearly fails to understand the modern Western world, is capable of mounting a reasonably sophisticated attack on a large corporation? Let alone the attackers not mentioning "The Interview" until after journalists began speculating that this was the reason behind the attack...
The theater chains figure that many Americans will stay away from the theaters if the movie is shown.
They're probably right. Never mind the fact the real danger is probably dying on the road on the way there. Americans would say "Why take the chance?" and they take those kind of odds routinely when they buy lottery tickets.
For Youtube, Neflix and the like, the risk of being hacked is real.
If Obama is guilty of anything, it's spending all those billions on spying rather than securing the internet.
Discloser: I work for a company that makes routers and firewalls. Most posters here will have gone through our equipment several times leaving a comment. AFAIK, our work site is just as vulnerable as Sony's. Get to Exchange and you have all our emails. Convenience of use has won over security a long time ago. That and single sourced infrastructure.
Dave, I agree with most of your points except the one about Obama securing the internet with his surveillance billions.
Sony is not an American company, so the NSA's billions on Internet security would have changed nothing in this case. Whoever is actually behind this hack, it's Sony's near-inexistant Internet security (and probably shabby internal security protocols as well) that is the heart of this issue.
If Sony had proper protocols and security in place, I might believe a nation-state could be behind this hack. As it is, it seems my neighbors kid could apparently be behind it.
But then I'm saying that North Korea could technically be behind it.
Except that the FBI said it is, so it isn't.
It looks as though the 'illuminarti' (can't say zionist mafia) are determined to get regime change in North Korea. If i were Mr Kim Jong Dong, i would watch my back as the Global puppet masters have painted a Bullseye on his and are determined to get a McDonalds in Pyongyang!
A word of warning Mr Kim, if Tony Blair wants to come over to your sunny peninsular to broker a truce or something like that, then shoot on sight as you remember what happened after he paid a visit to Gadaffi.
Seth Rogan........Mossad stooge?.....there's a lot of them in Hollywood.....The Siege, Executive Decision........with this film (The Inteview) the 'West' is paving the way to murder this man, but before they can do that they have to destroy his name. They have to turn him into a fool that no one will care about when they launch their offensive against him..........6 to 12 months, thats all you've got left Kim.
Have fun with this one mods!
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Possible.. but probably not from the NK. More likely some lone wolf who's looking for publicity or "make right all the wrong that has been done to him". If the NK isn't behind this since the first demand was money, I'm sure that if the film showed up even Podunk, Idaho, that some nut-case might decide to take advantage of all the publicity.
I do believe that Obama was wrong beating up Sony for cancelling when it's obviously out of their hands. I mean what could they do? Refuse to release any more of their films? I guess that would teach the theater owners.
These are strange times, to be sure. But sorting out the truth from hype, private interests, PR, and politics is difficult at best. I'll hope that the truth actually does come out at some point, but I fear it won't.
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If I owned a theatre, I wouldn't willingly show that movie either, at least not during a peak season. The reviewers who have seen it said it was utter crap. Any excuse to dump a potential money loser like this must be like manna from heaven for theatre owners who can now try to line up something that will fill seats.
If the movie had been shown and nobody showed up to see it, the North Koreans would have claimed each empty seat to be a righteous blow against the oppressors of the downtrodden proletariat who rose up (err, didn't sit down that is) against the ... OK I'm running out of rubbish here, but you get the picture. The only one who really comes out ahead in the current situation is the management of Sony Pictures who now have an excuse they can use for why this movie will lose a big pile of money.
If I owned a theatre, I wouldn't willingly show that movie either, at least not during a peak season. The reviewers who have seen it said it was utter crap. Any excuse to dump a potential money loser like this must be like manna from heaven for theatre owners who can now try to line up something that will fill seats.
The initial reviews of "The Sound of Music" weren't that glowing either.
Well I wouldn't read too much into that ...
To be honest 99% of the movies released for "holiday periods" are crap simply because traditionally it's a period where families and friends get together and spend sometime at the movies - no matter what is showing. Just look at what else is showing these days and what the reviewers say about it....
So they have the ability to do it, the motive, evidence seems to point to them (not entirely sure how reliable it is though), and applaud that it was done but would like us believe it was them, honest!
The real baddies for me are the managers who allowed employee information to be stored in such a lax manner so they could collect a bonus for trimming their budgets.
The 'evidence' that's been disclosed is, uh, flimsy.
I'm not saying it can only be a false flag op, but there's something that doesnt feel right about the idea it was NK. From the messages that read like an English speaker trying to sound non-native to the fact NK would normally be trumpeting their 'victory' over the Western devils.
Frankly I'd find it easier to believe it's a /b/ prank than the Norks based on whats been made available so far.
A company blowing its foot off with a shotgun, then yelling "look at me, look at me" while lawyers are starting to deploy attack fins and the apparently well-planned marketing ploy actually results in the product being pull off the market in a hurry?
Granted, after 20 years of US presidencies of permanently increasing delirium and retardation, one is fully blasé about practically anything (fully expecting nuclear fallout in Europe any time soon, already stocked up on beer and a hut innawoods), but this seems to take it a bit too far even for the 21st century.
All the hackers wanted was money. That was their thing in the communications with Sony before the media brought up the NORK idea in it's speculations.
Of course the hacker and the US Gov are opportunistic predators so both glomped on to the NORK thing.
(just my useless two cents)
Yup, and the media have seized upon it as it makes better headlines to have a nation state behind it.
I don't buy that it's the Norks either, and some of the 'evidence' doesn't exactly stack up. It's been claimed the attackers used DNS masking techniques to try and hide their origins. Tactic of an advanced nation based attacker that is not.....
The term nation state implies sovereign backing. In much the same way we say Britain went to war, rather than members of the MoD went to war.
The latter is true, but sounds fucking stupid
The term nation state isn't exactly new either, it provides a distinction against the various other types of state. A quick Google will soon fill the gaps in your knowledge AC.
Sony was hacked via a SMB exploit. This harks back to 1995: Clueless home users putting Windows PCs on cable modems and script kiddies having fun over ports 135 - 139.
Sony was clueless in 2005 when they released a root kit on millions of CDs and infected thousands of government departments with their crapware (and enabled many opportunists who came along for the ride on the new exploit) and now they want us to believe that a dumb SMB exploit was an attack by a foreign nation?
Occam's Razor tells me they left a bunch of unpatched Windows 2000 servers online with no firewall and a script kiddy gang went to town with it.
Seriously, what were they really suggesting: I interpreted repeat of 911 to mean they were about to fly a whole lot of planes into cinemas around the world to try to stop that film showing - ludicrous.
I'm almost ready to look for the nearest cinema to show this, go there and watch it and say 'bring it on' to these idiots.
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