News US asked for China's help on N. Korea cyberattacks: official

[queenislam]

Assalamu'alaikum!
greeting.
21Dec1024
US asked for China's help on N. Korea cyberattacks: official.

The United States has asked China to help block cyber attacks from North Korea as it weighs a response to the crippling hack of Sony Pictures, a US official said Saturday.
"We have discussed this issue with the Chinese to share information, express our concerns about this attack and to ask for their cooperation," a senior US administration official told AFP.

The US blames the isolated state for the hacking that prompted the cancellation of the Christmas Day release of "The Interview," a madcap romp about a CIA plot to kill leader Kim Jong-Un that infuriated the North.

North Korea called Saturday for a joint investigation with the US into the crippling attack on Sony, denouncing Washington's "slandering" after President Barack Obama warned Pyongyang of retaliation.

China is North Korea's closet ally, and has traditionally had long-standing influence with the leaders of the hermit state.
The US administration official said that in "our cybersecurity discussions, both China and the United States have expressed the view that conducting destructive attacks in cyberspace is outside the norms of appropriate cyber behavior."

The US and China last year set up a special panel to discuss cybersecurity.

But earlier this year, in an unprecedented move Washington charged five members of a shadowy Chinese military unit with hacking US companies to winkle out their trade secrets.

In the first-ever prosecution of state actors over cyberespionage, a federal US grand jury indicted the five on charges of breaking into US computers to benefit Chinese state-owned companies, leading to job losses in the United States in steel, solar and other industries. The five remain at large however.

It is unclear how the United States will choose to retaliate against North Korea.

Addressing reporters after the FBI said Pyongyang was to blame, Obama said Washington would never bow to "some dictator."

"We can confirm that North Korea engaged in this attack," Obama said.

"We will respond. We will respond proportionately and we'll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose."
~News.
Thank you for reading,
~Wasslam.

 

[queenislam]

North Korea demands joint inquiry with US into Sony Pictures hack
Pyongyang denies responsibility for cyber-attack and threatens grave consequences if Washington continues to blame it!

 

[queenislam]

• Saturday 20 December 2014 12.46 GMT

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un. Sony's film The Interview, which it pulled following the cyber-attack, depicts Kim's assassination. Photograph: KCNA/EPA
North Korea has proposed holding a joint inquiry with the US into the hacking of Sony Pictures, claiming it can prove it did not carry out the cyber-attack.

The foreign ministry in Pyongyang denied responsibility for the the highest-profile corporate hack in history, and said there would be grave consequences if Washington refused to collaborate on an investigation and continued to blame it.

The state KCNA news agency added that claims North Korea had conducted the attack on Sony in revenge for the controversial comedy The Interview, a multimillion-dollar comedy starring James Franco and Seth Rogen that depicts the assassination of Kim Jong-un, were “groundless slander”.

KCNA quoted the foreign ministry as saying: “As the United States is Spreading groundless allegations and slandering us, we propose a joint investigation with it into this incident.

“Without resorting to such tortures as were used by the CIA, we have means to prove that this incident has nothing to do with us.”

North Korea’s comments came after Barack Obama said Sony had made a mistake in axing the comedy, which had been due for release on Christmas Day.

Speaking on Friday after the FBI pinned the blame for the cyber-attack on North Korea, Obama said: “We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States, because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don’t like, or news reports that they don’t like.

“Or even worse imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.

“That’s not who we are. That’s not what America is about.”

Obama said he was sympathetic to Sony’s plight but added: “I wish they had spoken to me first.”

Sony Entertainment’s CEO, Michael Lynton, hit back, saying the company had been in touch with White House officials over the hacking before the film was pulled.

Lynton argued the comedy had been pulled because it would have been impossible to screen after major cinema groups backed out for fear of terrorist attacks.

Lynton told CNN he hoped the film would still be shown, but added no video on demand services had supported a release.

“We have not backed out. We have always had every desire to let the American public see it,” Lynton said.

On Wednesday Sony issued a statement saying it had “no further release plans” for the film and has also pulled its website and promotional material from an official YouTube channel.

The FBI has been investigating suspected links with North Korea’s Bureau 121 hacking unit since early December, and on Friday officials said a technical analysis of the malware used in the attack had been linked to other similar software “that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed”.

“We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this attack on a private sector entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there. Further, North Korea’s attack on SPE [Sony Pictures Entertainment] reaffirms that cyberthreats pose one of the gravest national security dangers to the United States,” the FBI said in a statement.

The White House had already labelled the attack a “serious national security matter”, but Obama would not be drawn on Washington’s reponse.

“We will respond, we will respond proportionally, and in a place and time that we choose. It’s not something that I will announce here today at this press conference,” he said.

Sony has been left reeling from the November attack, after thousands of confidential documents, including employee social security numbers, personal emails, unreleased films and executive pay were published online.

The hacking group Guardians of Peace (GOP) that claimed responsibility for the attack demanded Sony pull release of The Interview, which it did on Wednesday after threats invoking 9/11 were made against cinemagoers, and after major US theater groups cancelled screenings.

The decision has drawn the ire of many high-profile names in Hollywood, who have also criticised the press for publishing details from the hacked documents.

George Clooney called on Hollywood to get The Interview released in any format possible. “We cannot be told we can’t see something by Kim Jong-un, of all people … we have allowed North Korea to dictate content and that is just insane,” he said in an interview with Deadline.

GOP reportedly sent Sony executives a message on Thursday evening, calling the studio’s decision to cancel the release “very wise”.

The statement was written in broken English and leaked to CNN. It continued: “Now we want you never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy.

“And we want everything related to the movie, including its trailers, as well as its full version down from any website hosting them immediately

news.

 

[sister herb]

USA thinks they can freely make and spread insulting material about anyone and if others dislike it - well, its their own problem.

 

[queenislam]

Sony removes ALL ads for 'The Interview'

A huge billboard for 'The Interview' was taken down in Hollywood on Friday, after Sony cancelled the release of the film which was scheduled for next week.

 

[Abu Juwairiya]

I thought the excerpt below about US-North Korean relations (although different in context) in 2007 aptly describes and neatly suits the relevance of this episode as well in the strained and on going relationship between them-

"A truism in human as well as world affairs is that if you threaten people, they will defend themselves. If you reach out in good faith, people are likely to reach back.

A case in point is the long tortuous relationship between the United States and North Korea. One of many illustrations was when, in 2002, President Bush named North Korea a charter member of the “Axis of Evil.” North Korea was developing plutonium bombs and represented an imminent threat, according to U.S. intelligence.

The charges in fact instigated the very threats that Washington had warned against. North Korea, unlike Iraq, could already defend itself—with massed artillery aimed at Seoul, South Korea, and at U.S. troops near the demilitarized zone. The stakes rose harrowingly as North Korea began amassing its nuclear weapons arsenal.

Then, in February of this year [2007], multilateral talks convened in Beijing (which included China, Japan, Russia and South Korea as well as North Korea and the United States). Within days, in an apparent about-face for both Pyongyang and Washington, the talks produced heartening results: North Korea, responding to conciliatory offers, agreed to start dismantling its nuclear facilities and allow nuclear inspectors back in the country.

The Bush administration declared the talks a success. The spin was that North Korea, faced with a potentially regime-changing isolation from the world community, had backed down. What actually happened is quite different, and instructive about how to help defuse the North Korea crisis and others like it.

Last October [2006], North Korea conducted a nuclear test in the mountains near the Chinese border, apparently a dud, yet with enough firepower to inch the world a bit farther toward nuclear Armageddon. Last July [2006], North Korea resumed long-range missile testing—also a fizzle, yet with the ominous signal that payload and delivery might eventually come together.

The test, and the missile firing, can be added to the record of the Bush administration’s achievements.

Leon V. Sigal, one of the foremost experts on nuclear diplomacy in the region, sets the context

“When President Bush took office,” Sigal wrote in the November 2006 issue of Current History, “the North had stopped testing longer-range missiles. It had one or two bombs’ worth
of plutonium and was verifiably not making more. Six years later, it has eight to 10 bombs’ worth, has resumed longer-range missile tests, and feels little restraint about nuclear testing.”

Reviewing the record, Sigal concludes that “Pyongyang in fact has been playing tit for tat—reciprocating whenever Washington cooperates and retaliating whenever Washington reneges—in an effort to end enmity.”

An example for cooperation was set more than a decade ago. Haltingly and unevenly, the Clinton administration began a process to normalize U.S. political and economic relations with North Korea and guarantee its security as a non-nuclear state. In 1994, North Korea agreed not to enrich uranium.

Then, in 2002, Bush’s “Axis of Evil” militarism had the predictable effects: North Korea returned to the development of missiles and nuclear weapons, expelled U.N. inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Eventually, however, under pressure from Asian countries, the Bush administration agreed to talks, leading to an agreement in September 2005 that North Korea would abandon “all nuclear weapons and existing weapons programs” and allow inspections, in exchange for international aid with a light-water reactor, and a nonaggression pledge from the United States. By the agreement, the two sides would “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize relations.”

Had that agreement been implemented, there would not have been a North Korean bomb test or the heightened conflict, always verging on the edge of nuclear war.

Much as in the case of Iran during the same years, the Bush administration chose confrontation over diplomacy, immediately undermining the accord". (Source: "Making the Future, Occupations, Empire and Resistance" By Noam Chomsky, P 7-8, 2007)