Obama's biggest gaffe? North Korea likely not behind Sony hack

FBI remains confident, but private security firms doubt Korean interference

While President Obama, acting on intelligence gathered by the FBI, blamed North Korea for the recent Sony hack, new evidence points to recently laid-off staff members of Sony, and not the isolationist Asian country.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Experts from Norse, a cyber security firm, briefed FBI agents on December 29 and said that their own investigation points to former Sony employees and hackers from piracy groups.

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Still, the FBI remains adamant that North Korea was behind the devastating hack, but Sony remains open to private security firms and their findings.

Norse, who have been investigating the hack for over a month, said that the FBI's quick jump to blame North Korea was a mistake.

"When the FBI made the announcement so soon after the initial hack was unveiled, everyone in the (cyber) intelligence community kind of raised their eyebrows at it, because it's really hard to pin this on anyone within days of the attack," said Kurt Stammberger, Norse's vice president of market development.

"The FBI has concluded the Government of North Korea is responsible for the theft and destruction of data on the network of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Attribution to North Korea is based on intelligence from the FBI, the U.S. intelligence community, DHS, foreign partners and the private sector," a statement from the FBI read. "There is no credible information to indicate that any other individual is responsible for this cyber incident."

One anonymous source did suggest that though the FBI considered the hack to be an inside job, they don't believe the evidence supports that conclusion.

Part of the reason the FBI believes North Korea is behind the hack, is the malware and technical links which were used, both of which have been used by the hermit kingdom in previous hacking attacks against the U.S. and western targets.

Stammberger and Norse do not see these as certain signs of North Korean involvement.

"Whenever we see some indicators or leads that North Korea may be involved, when we follow those leads, they turn out to be dead ends," he said. "Do I think it's likely that (the FBI) has a smoking gun? . We think that we would have seen key indicators by now in our investigation that would point to the North Koreans: We don't see those data points."

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