Sony’s hack was the underground deal of the century

Popular media is still a decade out of date when it comes to understanding hacking and the dark side of cyber.

We have moved on from the primary threat being home hackers compensating for a lack of physical prowess, by being the meanest dork on the web; to militarised cyber and organized crime.

Cyber crime is big business where everything has its value on the open market, from your skimmed credit card, to the blueprints for a highly sensitive something or other, and everything in-between.

As such, should you want to rent a botnet for half an hour to launch a denial of service attack on the Internet infrastructure of a totalitarian family dictatorship, then so be it.

What does this have to do with Sony breach?

When you dig into the Sony Pictures cyber catastrophe, focus on The Interview was not immediately prominent, but developed into the forefront of the incident as events unfolded.

This tells you that there was a change in direction in the focus of the hacking group, and as cyber and industrial espionage is a business, the direction of the hack was drive by market forces.

I have visions of one of the hacking team members (a Howard like character from the Big Bang Theory) having an epiphany, approaching North Korea and offering them with the ability to influence the demands of the hackers for a MASSIVE fee.

There you have it, North Korea’s involvement in threatening the most powerful nation on Earth was enabled by an opportunist hacker making a quick buck.

Taken from my blog at https://www.stevesface.co.uk/2014/12/24/sonys-hack-was-the-underground-deal-of-the-century/