July 13, 2021 • 45 mins
Did North Korea really wage cyberwar to stop The Interview from airing? How did this happen -- and is there a conspiracy afoot? Join Ben and Matt as they welcome tech expert Jonathan Strickland for the second part of their series on the Sony hacks.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know. I don't know if we've ever done this,
but this week's classic is the second installment of our
two part series on the Sony Hack, and so much
has happened since that. I think a lot of people
have forgotten just how weird this was, and uh, the
kind of precedent. It's set for cyber warfare of the future. Yes,
(00:21):
just like the President our first episode on this topic
set for how excited you are to be hearing this
episode right now? So so, but without any further ado,
let's get into it. From UFOs two, Ghosts and government
cover ups. History is writtled with unexplained events. You can
turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want
(00:42):
you to now previously other stuff they don't want you
to know. Stay away from that datamat. It's gonna blow.
The movie of terrorism must be stopped. But what if
someone tried to censor pants? Hey guys, it's Jonathan Strickland.
I'm from Tech Stuff, and I'm still in this room
(01:03):
with you. Yes, this is part two of our episodes.
Let's just hop in that you know who we are.
I'm Matt, that's Ben, this is Jonathan. We're having a
great time and it's getting hacky and kind of North
Korea in here. Yeah. Another thing to remember about this, uh,
(01:24):
something else that that doesn't necessarily point the finger at
North Korea, but to show the magnitude of this attack.
It wasn't just the information with stolen. They white computers
at Sony Pictures. So people who came in to work
on that Monday. I read uh an interview with guy
he wasn't named, but he wasn't employee son the aftermath
at Sony Yes, where he said, Yeah, we come in
(01:46):
to work on Monday, we turn on our computers, we're working.
Suddenly all the computers go black. We figure there's just
some sort of network error or something. We realize that
there's a real problem, and we go home, not thinking
it's a big deal because it was the week of
thanks Living, which is a holiday week here in the
United States. So they went home thinking, oh, well, we'll
just come back and it will just be an extra
long holiday. We hurry for us. They come back the
(02:08):
following Monday, there's still problems, and then they realize there
could be a lot of personal information about the employees
of Sony that was wrapped up as part of this attack,
and it could involve things like insurance claim just really
personal stuff that could impact real human beings who have
real lives. Social security numbers, yeah, yeah, social security numbers.
(02:31):
That means that opens the door for possibility of medical information.
And I have a little bit of a theory about
this stuff, but I'm gonna hold it until we get
through the rest of this story. On December four, and
North Korea officially denies any involvement in the Sony hack.
Like Shaggy and MC. Some of the older members of
our audience may remember he said it wasn't me. Wow,
(02:53):
that's not bad. Hey, Shaggy formally a marine as well.
But I didn't see that coming. It wasn't But this, uh,
these leaked emails are still coming out. Journalists are all
over this, scouring the documents. Uh the spokesperson and I
remember we said that December four, right, North Korea officially
(03:16):
says it wasn't me and uh. December eighth, however, a
spokesperson for North Korea says the cyber attack might have
been a righteous deed of supporters and sympathizers, but it
wasn't directly linked to us, which is very similar to
some of the stuff we've heard from state sponsored cyber
(03:36):
attacks via Moscow via Beijing. Um, and I'm sure that
you know, I'm sure that Uncle Sam's doing a couple too. Yeah. Hey,
that was officially not the United States. That's the old
plank in the eye thing and get the spec out
of your eye. But there's a plank in mind, right,
(03:57):
So this continues though. Yeah, and then on December ninth,
there was a message posted to get hub which was
allegedly from the Guardians of Peace. Now, it is extremely
difficult to verify whether or not, and an anonymous message
like that is from the same person that posted the
other anonymous thing. This is this is like attributing anything
to the group Anonymous, where where Anonymous itself is not
(04:20):
a cohesive group with a single leader. It's actually a
sort of a morphous semi organization. And you could even
have one group of people within that organization want to
do something. Yeah, exactly, So well in that light, since
we're not sure if this message came from the same
people that you did the Voice of Ben, would you
(04:42):
mind doing an evil voice or like an evil voice,
or however you want to spend it, stop immediately showing
the movie of terrorism which could back the regional peace
then cause the war. See added that sea at the end,
we know nothing about the darting email or see by
Sony staff see, but you should judge why it's by yourself,
why such things are happening and who is responsible for
(05:03):
what you Sony and FBI cannot find us amazing. So
so this, this supposed representative of Guardians of Peace, denies
knowledge of a previous message also supposedly from Guardians of Peace.
But it's also for the first time in the messages
(05:23):
from these guys saying stop the movie of terrorism. It
does not say the interview, right, but it's specifically talking
about a movie. Else is a stop immediately showing and
the movie hadn't come out yet. Uh December ten, though
they get this message gets a little bit of street
cred courtesy of Joe Demost, assistant director for the FBI
(05:45):
Cyber Division. Yeah, he was talking at a cybersecurity conference
when he said, quote, there is no this is on
December tenth, quote there is no attribution to North Korea
at this point. The speaking of the attack the Sony hack, right,
And it's been described by a private security firm named
fire Eye as an unparalleled, well planned crime carried out
(06:08):
by an organized group for which neither spe nor any
other companies could have been fully prepared. So that's Sony
Picture Entertainment. So they say there's no way to prepare
for this sort of level. Uh, this sort of cyberus,
you know. But they also discussed how they were criticizing
Sony for their security. Um, they're saying that there were
(06:29):
a lot of backdoors and and essentially little uh let's
just I don't know if you call loopholes, but fairly
easy ways of gaining access. Sure, I mean backdoors is
probably the best way of putting it. Like, the two
things you've got to worry about with your your online
security is just the value of the security system and
then the value of the people who use it. Those
(06:51):
are the two elements. Well, we know that for instance,
with I Love they brought up steck stucks Net earlier
because one of the things that was abundantly clear about
stucks net this this was this was a program most
likely created by Israel and the United States working together, right,
And what it did was it altered the speed of
(07:12):
center fuges in the nuclear processing in or on and uh.
And then screwed up the entire nuclear UH facility, or
at least the process of refining this. Those computers, however,
were offline, which means that the only way that stucks
net could be introduced into that system would be what
(07:32):
via USB driving thumb thumb drive of some sort or
some other some other physical delivery system, which would mean
getting physical access to those machines, which would mean either
infiltrating the the system entirely, well as in having a
like a cover agent going in and becoming part of this,
or more likely using social engineering to get access UH,
(07:56):
using just simple lying to people. It's really see if
I walk into a company and I tell an overworked
receptionist that I'm there because there was an I t
issue that and I need access to a certain floor
more nine times ten I get that access. Really well,
(08:18):
why do you think I'm not my desk so much
during the day? What happened to the old janitor buddy?
That's that's a really good point that the human element
is often going to be what compromises a system. Sure,
and we also know that Seth Rogan and James Franco
of course have some stuff to say about this. I mean,
I don't know if they still get paid if the
(08:38):
movie doesn't come out the way it was supposed to. Um.
I yeah, I don't know if the full contract was
released in the hacks. If it was, I have not
read it. I just talked about the money that they
made for the films. But one thing I do know
is that they went on Howard Sterns Show on the
fifte of December and in discussions with Mr Stern, I
(09:00):
just wanted to read this one quote from Seth Rogan.
He says, I can't do an impression. Seth Rogan, man,
I wish I could. All Right, I believe in you, dude,
he says, Now, no one has definitively told us that
North Korea is who did that. One day, I'm like,
it's for sure them, And the next day I'm like,
there's no way it's them. It seems too it seems
(09:22):
too savvy of Hollywood politics. And he's speaking as a
producer of the film, um, you know, and director and writer.
And when they were talking about this stuff, they were
just speaking about some of the more insider information that
was leaked, and why would they leak all of that stuff?
Why would North Korea care about that. Why would North
Korea be aware that that itself would be the key
(09:46):
to UH to causing action to happen, especially since North
Korea didn't if it were, if it was in fact
North Korea and the interview was in fact the reason
for it, why wasn't that at ever part of the
messaging at the initial messaging? Right? Why is the messaging
seemed to evolve? And uh, speaking of evolving, we know
(10:09):
in December sixteen they up the stakes and specified the
interview itself when they said that movie theaters showing this
feature would be attacked in a quote here nine eleven
style and what they said, and that, I mean, if
you want to hit a hot button like nerve in
the American psychling, that's all you have to say. And
as Jon Stewart said, I had no idea that was
(10:32):
a style. Now, yeah, and yes, And then you you
go back to our recent memory, you think about the
Batman shooting at a movie theater in Colorado, Yeah, and
you just it kind of conjures a lot of images. Well, yeah,
there there have been actual acts of terror, depending upon
you know, how you look at at the definition. But
(10:54):
there have been acts of terror that have taken place
inside UH movie theaters in the United States, and so
this was a very evocative kind of message. It's one
that a lot of companies took very serious for for
understandable reasons. I mean, there was a lot of backlash
for the for their their actions, that action being that
(11:16):
Car Mike theaters began to cancel screenings of the Interview
and that was followed by every other major UH theater chain,
to the point where it would looked like the only
place you were going to see The Interview for a
while was going to be in these tiny, little independent
arthouse theaters, which is the weirdest thing in the world.
This is a major film from a major motion picture
(11:39):
studio that would only get seen in art house pictures
at artnhouse theaters. And then you don't even get that.
So Sony announces the cancelation of the whole theatrical release.
And mind you, this is after car Mike begins sets
off that domino, after they canceled the premiere on summary
team right right, And not only did they announce the
(12:02):
cancelation of the theatrical release, they went further than that.
They said that this movie would not be released in
any format for at least the foreseeable future. So they
were saying at that time, they were saying it's not
going to come out in video on demand because a
lot of people said, why don't you just release a
video on demand? Yeah, they can't attack us all and
then yeah, they're not going to come into our homes,
(12:24):
but there's there's not gonna be that you could or
you could do it as uh, you know, DVD or
blue ray. But they were saying, no, we have no
plans to release this film in any form and read
it even banned a couple of users. That's how you
know stuff's getting real for sharing some leaked documents and
I think for possibly trying to find the actual interview
(12:47):
the the actual movie. So so remember back on the tenth,
the FBI said there is no link, no attribution right
then on the UM and I hate to use this
quote on anymous White House officials, but that's how the
Guardian reported it. UM anonymous White House officials say that
the US has evidence that the hack was coordinated by
(13:10):
North Korea. Now there's some words in there that they're
a little vague I think on purpose. Yeah, coordinated could
mean that North Korea could have been essentially the the
if you want to think about the money behind the
attacks attack, and then they essentially hire out our contract
(13:30):
out hackers, possibly in some place like China or Russia
where we know there are a lot of state sponsored
hackers and already um and use them to perpetuate this attack.
And then yet still could come come out and say, hey,
we didn't do it right, and we see what's funny
about the statement too. I think you make a great
(13:50):
case for the word coordinated. Folks, ladies, and gentlemen. Whenever
you read a report that says anonymous White House officials
or a government official who did not want to be named,
that means that they're giving a leak with the with
the blessing of whichever institution they originate from. And also
(14:12):
it's meant to avoid some responsibility of an official statement,
so that anonymous White House official who said that everybody
everybody in the White House was like, yeah, that's fine,
but you know, don't say your name, don't say you
said it. Yeah, it's so weird how that works. The
(14:32):
strategic leaking of information like that. I wish I could
strategically leak information like that, just strategically leak I've just
been leaving a trail all of the time. So yeah,
so we've solved one mystery on the show already. Um,
we know that President Obama says he has a problem
with Sony refusing to release the interview. You know, it's
(14:55):
bowing to terrorism, so he officially something later. Well, and
this was the backlash I was talking about earlier, right, Yet,
there were a lot of people who immediately criticized the
theater chains for for pulling it out, and then later
criticizing Sony for saying that they were not going to
release it under any format. And these were people, and
I include myself in this, who didn't necessarily have any
(15:17):
desire to see the movie. They just didn't like the
precedent this was setting. Personally, I didn't like the precedent
of saying your threats are effective and therefore you can
affect me. Because here two thousand fourteen was the year
of the security breach you had. You had so many
companies hit by different security breaches andsoft eBay, mount Cox
(15:42):
Target whether that was technically to but but the fallout continued.
The CEO of Targets stepped down because of those. So
we've had a whole year of security breaches, and then
when you have this happen and you have a threat,
a non specific threat come in and then you see
this dramatic reaction to it. The message that sends out
(16:03):
to everybody, the perpetrators and everybody else is that with
some effort, you, an individual or small group of individuals,
can impact an enormous number of people, an entire industry
of people. And that opens the floodgates for people to say, well, heck,
I could do that. I mean, even just for for
(16:24):
for giggles, Like, I don't have any ideological problem with anybody,
but the thought of being able to affect that many
people is really appealing to a certain group of folks. Yeah,
I mean, how far are we are we from a
supervillain just co opting YouTube and appearing and being like,
you know, attention America, if you do not immediately reassemble
(16:47):
the cast of Night Cart, that will be grave consequences. Yeah,
I'm I'm going after Pauti Pie. That's what I'm'm just
gonna appear in. From of all so well, I'd just
like to say that it's not releasing this movie at all.
If that is indeed what happens, which it doesn't seem
to be, you know what's going to happen. But if
(17:07):
they did that, then it would be effectively paying a
forty seven million dollar ransom or however much it costs
to create the film, plus whatever money they would have
made opening day on Christmas when everybody goes to see movies,
and having the cancel those public appearances too, Oh yeah,
like the Night Show they didn't go on there, all
those things. It's just crazy to think if you cave
(17:28):
to this, just what you're giving up and the FBI
comes back around and now we're getting closer and closer
to the present day, because they say In a statement
released on Friday this via The Guardian, the FBI said
a technical analysis of the malignant software known as malware
that used in the attack has been linked to other
(17:50):
malware uh that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed.
There were similarities and specific lines of code, encryption algorithms,
data deletion methods, and compromise networks. The FBI said, I
like how they explain malware, but not encryption algorithms. Hware.
You know, that's what we used to call viruses because
(18:11):
I use that accent because it was the Guardian. So
so there's another interesting phase here, North Korean actors. This
is all a slow bill towards my theory. North Korean actors. Uh,
that's not necessarily a member of the North Korean government. No,
it could be someone who appears in a theatrical production
of the Makado North Korea, or perform one super adamant
(18:36):
North Korean dude. It's like, no, you can't have that movie.
So yeah. This is also something else I should point
out is that code, whether or not it originates in
a particular country, doesn't belong there. Like as soon as
it gets out in the wild, it's out there and
people will make use of whatever works. So it's possible
to impersonate code. It's it's well, it's impossible to to
(18:59):
appropriate and then use it for your own purposes. In fact,
there are hackers out there, and I use hackers very
loosely in this sense, that don't ever write any code themselves.
With script kitties, they get hold of code that's been
previously written and they repurpose it for something else, and
often they do it with minimum alteration or maybe no
(19:21):
alteration at all. This is a great way of saying
how the Sony hack was inherently different from the d
D o S attacks that brought down Microsoft Xbox Live
during the same time frame, because that was a simple
d D o S attack, which I was telling Matt earlier,
that's that's kind of like the equivalent of me walking
up to one of you while you're trying to work
(19:41):
and go, hey, what you're doing, what you're doing, Hey,
what you're doing. What you're doing, what you're doing, what
you're doing, what you're working on, what you're doing, and
just doing that all day long. You can't get anything
done because I'm irritating you. And that's exactly what happens
with the d d S attack. Well, that's a that's
a very unsophisticated attack, right, It's it's just throwing a
hammer at somebody. This attack was much more robust, much
(20:05):
more It involved way more levels than just ADDS attacks,
much more sophisticated, exactly. And it's like sneaking in at night,
setting up and booby trapping your entire house and then
waiting till you're at work the next day and just
setting it it's home alone. It's McCauley Culkins possibly involved. No,
he was not involved. Was that kids think Kevin? Was
he Kevin and Home Alone? Yeah, so now we know
(20:28):
what Kevin's doing. He's hacking. He's hacking into Home Alone seven.
That's but no, I mean, this is the reason why
I bring all that up is that it is possible
that someone could be using code that does in fact
have code coming from North Korea and not be connected
to North Korea. It's also possible the other ways, or
(20:50):
maybe using you on purpose because it did come from
North Korea. And in the murky world of espionage, those
kind of things are not impossible. I mean, I don't
know if they're they are possible. I think it's a
leap to say they're plausible. But what what about this?
Here's an interesting statistic. North Korea has about a thousand
(21:12):
email addresses, and for comparison, you can find about that
many according to a recent story by MPR, you can
find a thousand email addresses in maybe a block of
New York City. Yeah, I mean, I've got like four
year fifty myself. That's true, that's probably that's probably an exaggeration, right,
(21:33):
So on the whole Uh, the North Korean population is
not full of you know tech literati, Well they're they're
most of them are not allowed to have any connection
to the internet. This there's a couple of other interesting
points that have kind of unraveled over the last couple
of days as we record this. One is that the uh,
(21:56):
the Internet in North Korea suffered some major slowing down
to the point where people were saying no one would
be able to connect, and that raised questions and we
don't have answers for this. They raised the question of
is this at all connected to this sony hack? Was
it a retaliation because there was a statement of there
would be a proportional response to any attack that was
(22:18):
against the United States, So how do you what's a
what's proportionate to having a company have this North Korean film?
Do you do you shut down the military and government
access to the Internet because that's that's pretty much the
only people in North Korea who have the access we're
talking about, or was it some totally unrelated group that
(22:42):
decided to take it upon themselves kind of the way
North Korea was saying, Hey, it wasn't us, but whoever
it was, you guys are awesome, So is it the
same thing? But now going against North Korea or could
it just be a system failure that has nothing to
do with any of this, And the the pure answer
is that we do not know. Only the people who
(23:04):
would be responsible would know if in fact someone's responsible.
You know. There's also the there's also the possibility that
due to international tensions between the triumvirates here of North Korea, China,
the United States, we shall also had South Korea and Japan. Uh.
There there's a possibility that this might be handled in
(23:26):
backdoor channels differently than it's handled in the public sphere.
And this is something that quite often happens um in
in dealings between North Korea and many other many other countries. UH.
And I know this because during the nuclear during the
last round of failed nuclear talks, a North Korean um,
(23:50):
a member of the North Korean Foreign Ministry and his
entourage visited the school I was at at the time,
and their conversation was completely different worlds away from what
you would see on North Korea's official website, which you
can't visit and is in English and Korea. Yeah, he
was telling me about that. I don't know if you
(24:12):
want to read it. I mean, I think, I think
part of that is, like, you know, the idea of
saving face, the whole idea of how can we diffuse
the situation where no one looks like they are backing
down or apologizing or weak. No one can look weak.
Speaking of that, on December nineteen, we were talking about this, Jonathan,
(24:33):
North Korea offered to set up a joint inquiry with
the United States to find out who was behind this hack. Yeah,
they said, we don't. We don't approve of all the
things that have happened. We do think that they had
a noble goal in the sense that this movie is
an insult. But we didn't. We weren't responsible, and we
will help you find out who is in the United
States said, thanks, no thanks, But but here's the here's
(24:55):
the thing. There are so many different layers here, right,
the layer of there's the perception of whether or not
North Korea is being sincere, and it's offer whether whether
they're being whether they are trustworthy, whether we genuinely believe
North Korea to be behind the attacks, and we we
we in this room, can't say whether or not the
(25:17):
US government genuinely believes that. Um. One of the things
that that came up in the discussion Matt and I
had was that a lot of the there's no smoking
gun pointing at North pointing from North Korea for this
particular incident that we are aware of, but that doesn't
mean there isn't one. There could be one that the
(25:38):
FBI is fully aware of but has not made at
all public, and therefore there it could They could be
completely sincere when they say we believe North Korea to
be behind this right and what would the relationship be?
I love that point because there is not an easy
black and white answer. I have a little bit of
a theory. If you guys would like to hear, I
(25:59):
would love to or your theory. I've got a theory
of my own. So so Japan Right has a part
of it. Yes, you're familiar with its work. Japan has
um a large ethnic Korean population, some of whom are
DPRK sympathizers, and UH DPRK has to add a little
(26:20):
bit to its muddy reputation abroad. Uh it's often been
found as the ringleader for illegal activity such as smuggling
or creation of methamphetamine, creation of the so called Supernoes,
which were fake hundred dollar bills that were really, really
well done, and uh. It is completely possible that one uh,
(26:42):
that one or more ethnic Koreans working in Japan worked
for Sony let open the door, or there was some
sort of exploit that was passed along to hackers. What
I don't think happened. I just don't think that given
all of the other concerns that DPRK has right now,
(27:02):
and it has a lot the relationship with the Soviet
unions pretty much well, the relationship with Russia is pretty
much non existent. The relationship with China is deteriorating, especially
in the wake of Kim Jong Ill's death. I think
this was maybe state approved, but I don't think it
was state spearheaded. If it was, the priorities have to
(27:26):
be way off. It's not necessarily the behavior of a
rational actor unless there's more to the story. So I
think what we're looking at would be contractors, maybe sympathetic
activists of some sort, because there are there are, even
though a lot of people don't know this, there are
quite a few um sympathetic North Korea sympathizers in South
(27:49):
Korea in Japan, some of who are legit spies, but
many of whom I just grew up there and are
just supportive of it. Fun fact, the web master from
North Korea is from Spain. He is a Spanish national
m's and North Korea has three web hosts, so I
think it's much more likely that this attack originated from
a country with better equipment. I agree with that. I
(28:12):
think I'll go a step further based upon the fact
that we see no real mention of the interview the
movie of terrorism in these early attempts where the it
seems like it's more of extortion, pay us or this
stuff gets released, not stop doing this horrible thing. There's
no like the reason why we're doing this is because
(28:35):
of this, Now give us money or else were releases.
None of that was there. I think that this, to me,
it seems like it could be at least partially an
inside job that, like you were saying, it's someone who
is familiar with Sony systems. A lot of the information
I've read seems to indicate that the attackers at least
had some password access to certain systems at the get go,
(28:58):
which is not the easiest thing to get unless you
already have it, because they went through multiple systems, So
I'm I'm thinking that it was at least partially an
inside job, probably not directly related to anything with the interview.
At the beginning, it was only to me. It seems
like that was a leap on opportunity. After after the
(29:22):
after other people started bringing it up, they're like, oh, wow, crap,
we should totally say that's the reason. Yeah, that was
that was our plan the whole time. Yeah. Now, now again,
this is based on the information that's available to us, right,
and so we're only we're drawing some conclusions based upon
limited amounts of information. If this were office space, we
(29:43):
would have the leap to conclusions Matt out and we
would be shopping away. So I want to stress that
because even though that's something that I personally kind of
have a gut feeling about, I'm also more than happy
to I'm ready to say, Look, I could totally be
wrong and it not take a lot to prove that
I'm wrong. However, just from my own perspective this whole time,
(30:06):
I've been a little skeptical of the North Korea connection.
I guess it could be like a North Korea approved thing,
or even a North Korea sponsored thing, but it just
it seems like it seems like the actual attack and
the language used as extortion at the beginning, and the
method of embarrassing the company comes from a much more
(30:29):
insider perspective than at another country that's upset. It seems
personal to me. So then we've got some other possibilities here.
Right now, you're not gonna let me have my theory. No,
that was the intro to your theory. Oh man, thank
you for trying my theory. I apology. I apologize. So
(30:51):
I want to bring in the overall digital rights management
arguments and argument. This is someone who's upset that they
put the Sony c D way back in the day,
the back door attack on their computer. No, no, okay,
the idea of this guy has been a hard a
grudge since. Oh yeah, that's true. I mean no. So
(31:12):
the idea of structure controls over the Internet that have
been attempted to be put into legislation in the United
States several times and shot down spectacularly by the Internet
a couple of times. You're talking about it in the leaks, right,
they were talking about in the leaks and the m
p a A in general trying to work kind of
(31:33):
against Google. I don't know if you've seen Goliath. Oh yeah,
I mean Goliath. Yeah, come on, yes, no, I haven't heard.
Can tell me more about it, tell the tech guy
more about Okay, Well that's why. That's this is the
main reason I wanted you to be in this room.
Besides having all the other knowledge, shanthan to talk about
Goliath because I don't know enough about it. I've barely
(31:55):
touched the surface on it, and Ben and I will
have to do another full show just on that subject. Absolutely,
so there is to me. And this is just Matt
Frederick's opinion. Everybody, This seems like a an opportunity. Whether
or not who did it doesn't matter, um, an opportunity
for those people who want stricter controls and security controls
(32:17):
over the Internet and search controls through Google for pirate
of material and all this stuff. It seems like a
great opportunity for them to really say, hey, guys, look
at all the damage this cause. Look at all the
monetary and personal just damage that's been caused here. We
need your help, please secure the Internet for freedom. This
(32:38):
is uh, this is absolutely what's gonna happen. You're gonna
see lots of companies that have a vested interest in
keeping their intellectual property private from you know, jumping at
every single possible opportunity to do so to to protect themselves,
even at the expense of the ability for the rest
of us to use the Internet the way we've become
(32:58):
accustomed to. However, that being set and it's a very
difficult argument to make from that perspective, simply because the
damage that was done to Sony went well beyond a
few movies being linked to the Internet. In fact, if
you were to argue that that was the major cost
of the damages, everyone would laugh at you, because you
(33:18):
know it's it's hundreds of millions of dollars potentially. And
you know, we've had this discussion before too that that
a stolen movie doesn't necessarily mean a lost ticket sale.
Like one, you can't guarantee that the person wouldn't go
and see it anyway, or two that the person would
have seen it had they not pirateed it. That's another argument.
I think that it's one of those things that's going
(33:39):
to ramp up the discussion about Internet security. It's going
to end up having a lot of companies propose changes
that would be restrictive, but I don't think it's gonna
go much further than that. And part of the reason
for that is also that we have, simultaneously going on
while this hack is unfolding, the ongoing discussion about reclassifying
(34:03):
Internet in the United States as a utility, which would
give the FCC the authority to actually impose net neutrality
rules which were struck down at the beginning of two
thousand fourteen. Well, yeah, but the problem there is going
to be job security. I mean, who's the FEC gonna
work for. Like the individuals in the FCC, I have
(34:24):
to think about their career traject right. They have to
figure out how where am I going to get those
huge bags of money that they left at my stup?
You can't walk around with an empty burlap sack in
it and a cash sign on it. If anyone for
the FCC is listening, I don't necessarily abscribe abscribe to this, uh,
this scenario that Mr Boland is putting forward. I do
(34:45):
I get the I'll get the email where uh they'll say,
don't release this podcast or you will be destroyed. Like
do you understand how the internet works? It's already out
there right right, I know, I know I'm ribbing the
FEC a little bit and the people at that agency
have at times done fantastic work, and it can be
(35:06):
really difficult when there's so much money involved. Let's talk
about Project Goliath, though, because you're really interested in this,
and it's it's a strange it's a strange actual conspiracy,
not a theory, but a group of individuals coming together
to make a move on what they call Goliath. Yeah,
using code words, whatever that is. Well, I mean you've
(35:26):
got to use co words because you never know when
your communications are going to get leaked to the public.
And if you are not covering your tracks and everyone
automatically knows you're talking about Google, then and credit the
the secrecy, the veil of secrecy that Goliath provided was
not terribly thick. I mean, all of Jonathan's emails are
in code. Yeah, that's why. That's why you know the
(35:49):
subject red dog flies at one and you're like, oh,
it's that art I asked for for that article. Uh yeah,
it's hey, it's a red dog flying at one o'clock.
I thought it was lunch. I thought we were getting
hot talks. But you know I always eat it like
eat or yeah. Yeah, so that's red bull at um. Yeah. No,
it's it's so the Goliath. The Goliath story is only
(36:13):
partially related, partly because some of the information was gathered
from this league. But it is a collection of different
really big entities mostly Yeah, yeah, that are all concerned. Disney,
isn't there too, I believe, concerned about Goliath's uh influence
(36:36):
on their industry and how they can somehow mitigate that. Um,
and you're right, it would go there'd be a whole
episode when we'd have to go into a whole episode
to really talk about it. Well, maybe this is where
we kind of tease that sometime in the future we're
gonna have a Goliath episode. Yeah, would you like to
come back? We have to, We'd love to have you because, uh,
(36:56):
this this is an interesting thing, and I want to
just do the quick and dirty in the interest of
fairness thing that we have to say. Sure Goliath and
I can't finger quote hard enough there and the studios
opposing it, along with the m p A. M p
A A have different goals, but it's not so much
moral argument on either side as it is which environment
(37:19):
is better for our current business. Yeah, so it's no,
I mean not like there's a hero in a villain Google.
Google's slogan is don't be evil, but it is a
business and we we are the product. Just like in Facebook,
you are the product. Same thing with Google. I mean,
Google is not a search engine company, it's an ad company.
(37:40):
But Jonathan, isn't money the root of all evil? I
swear you are wrong. It is the love of money
that is the root of all evil. Money itself is
not the root of all you But what, okay, then,
what is correctly? I'd like to point out while you're
while you're percultly know, I'd like to point out that
don't be well is a very very different statement from
(38:02):
be good. Sure you could be totally immoral, Isn't that
that is the don't be evil well? To be fair though,
I mean, we're making it sound really really sinister, but
keep in mind it was a couple of college students
(38:22):
who started Google, and they were trying to keep in
mind certain values as this thing they had created ballooned
well beyond their there even their ambition. I mean they
were they are really smart, really hard working guys. But
I think they'd be the first to tell you, like,
you know, if you went back in time and told
Sarah Gey and Larry. Hey, guys, this thing you're working
(38:45):
on is going to turn you into multibillionaires. They be.
They look at you and say what I mean, like,
this is going to take up a sizeable part of
a city in California. I've been to the Google campus.
It is enormous. Um You've got to have a car
or a bike to get around from building to building
because that's how big it is. And this is one company,
(39:07):
you know, it's It's one of those things where I
think they created that slogan at a time when they
were just trying to, you know, keep themselves grounded. It's
just now with the benefit of hindsight, now that we
see Google as this enormous entity, don't be evil, starts
to take on a different connotation to us. So we
just got to remember the perspective. So I want to
add one more thing to the fire here, all right,
(39:29):
Do you think that the people responsible for the two
thousand and eleven heck were also involved in this one?
Could there be an inside person who just hasn't been
caught h R check your employment records. I mean, you
never say never. It just seems to me like this
was something that if if I stick with my insider theory.
(39:53):
It feels to me like this was something that had
been building up for a while for the person or
persons responsible, and there was something that was a tipping
point that caused the person to say, like, all right,
that I'm doing it. I can't. I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna let this happen anymore. I'm not gonna. Um,
you know, I I'm tired of working with a company
(40:16):
that has these policies. Again, that only works if it
fits my theory of what happened. It could obviously be
something totally different, that is I'm completely off base for
and then my answer doesn't make sense. I mean, yeah,
if we're with lack of information, I think it's I
think it's plausible that there was an inside person. Um.
But I'm also very curious about the evolution of this
(40:40):
North Korean conversation because the FBI seems pretty publicly convinced,
and I told Matt, I said, this could be indicative
of one of two things. In my mind, One is
that they in fact do have very compelling evidence that
we are just not aware of, and that North Korea
is in fact responsible. They can't release it because they
illegally gathered it. Whatever, whatever the reasoning behind it, they
(41:02):
have it, they know it, and we just can't be
privy as to how or why. The second part is
to me, the second idea is that the FBI releases
this information in an effort to actually lure out the
people who really did do it. The idea being that, well,
if we put pressure on this group by saying that
it is North Korea, then North Korea is going to
(41:24):
respond in a very antagonistic way. It's going to escalate matters.
It's going to start bringing a lot more pressure on
the group actually responsible. And I don't know about you,
but if I were a hacker and I had caused
this kind of chaos, at first, I'd be thinking, man,
look at Look at what a bad hacker I am. Man,
(41:44):
I look at what I affected. And then, as it
would snowball, I think, WHOA, things are getting out of control.
And then if I get to the point where there's
there are people talking about using words like war and terrorism,
I'm thinking this went way out of proportion of what
I was expecting. I wanted to cause this company problems,
so I didn't want to capitulate the war the world
(42:05):
into war and death. So then you get but then
you have this FBI group saying, well, you know, it's
clearly North Korea. Meanwhile they're thinking, all right, let's see
who squirms. Yeah, yeah, right, let's see which dog barks. Guys.
I'm so happy that we covered this. Yeah, I know,
especially for Ben and I, it's a little different because
we generally don't cover things that are happening now like
(42:27):
this is still happening. There's gonna be a more information
that comes out here this. There may be evidence that
ends up making a lot of the things I said,
mood it was Bhutan the whole time. But thank you
so much for joining us for this conversation. Everybody, um
and especially Jonathan. Yeah, where can people see more of
(42:48):
your stuff? Well, they could go to If you want
the super optimistic, happy version of the future, you should
go to fw thinking dot com. That's forward thinking dot com.
That's where I I look at the future in all
different aspects, not just science and technology, but culture, and
it is uh, you know, kind of the bright shiny version,
not the dark gloomy version. If you want the dark
(43:08):
gloomy version, sometimes I cover that on my other show
Tex Stuff, which is a podcast you can subscribe to
publishes twice a week, which several times Ben has been
on several times. Yes, we did an excellent episode about ambulances.
We've had a lot of positive feedback from people in
the industry on that one. Yeah, that's great. And then
also you can catch me on brain Stuff and What
(43:29):
the Stuff where I end up being a dude on
video who talks about things and weird locations occasionally. Yeah,
and you can visit you can visit those sites at
house stuff Works as YouTube page. There's a there's a
great one you did recently for brain Stuff on Old
Timey Voices. That was a ton of fun, the Transatlantic accent,
(43:50):
and as it got a lot of really great feedback,
it was featured quite a few times in different places. Uh.
And also keep an eye out there will be a
What the Stuff that comes out in which Ben and
I both appear in the same episode. Oh yeah, I
just saw that picture. That's so. Speaking of feedback, we
(44:12):
would love to hear your take on the North Korea. Uh, well,
the alleged North Korea hacks in in Sony. So find
us on Facebook and Twitter where we are Conspiracy Stuff.
Check out our podcast on our blog or iTunes. However,
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If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
(44:36):
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You know. I don't know if we've ever done this,
but this week's classic is the second installment of our
two part series on the Sony Hack, and so much
has happened since that. I think a lot of people
have forgotten just how weird this was, and uh, the
kind of precedent. It's set for cyber warfare of the future. Yes,
(00:21):
just like the President our first episode on this topic
set for how excited you are to be hearing this
episode right now? So so, but without any further ado,
let's get into it. From UFOs two, Ghosts and government
cover ups. History is writtled with unexplained events. You can
turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want
(00:42):
you to now previously other stuff they don't want you
to know. Stay away from that datamat. It's gonna blow.
The movie of terrorism must be stopped. But what if
someone tried to censor pants? Hey guys, it's Jonathan Strickland.
I'm from Tech Stuff, and I'm still in this room
(01:03):
with you. Yes, this is part two of our episodes.
Let's just hop in that you know who we are.
I'm Matt, that's Ben, this is Jonathan. We're having a
great time and it's getting hacky and kind of North
Korea in here. Yeah. Another thing to remember about this, uh,
(01:24):
something else that that doesn't necessarily point the finger at
North Korea, but to show the magnitude of this attack.
It wasn't just the information with stolen. They white computers
at Sony Pictures. So people who came in to work
on that Monday. I read uh an interview with guy
he wasn't named, but he wasn't employee son the aftermath
at Sony Yes, where he said, Yeah, we come in
(01:46):
to work on Monday, we turn on our computers, we're working.
Suddenly all the computers go black. We figure there's just
some sort of network error or something. We realize that
there's a real problem, and we go home, not thinking
it's a big deal because it was the week of
thanks Living, which is a holiday week here in the
United States. So they went home thinking, oh, well, we'll
just come back and it will just be an extra
long holiday. We hurry for us. They come back the
(02:08):
following Monday, there's still problems, and then they realize there
could be a lot of personal information about the employees
of Sony that was wrapped up as part of this attack,
and it could involve things like insurance claim just really
personal stuff that could impact real human beings who have
real lives. Social security numbers, yeah, yeah, social security numbers.
(02:31):
That means that opens the door for possibility of medical information.
And I have a little bit of a theory about
this stuff, but I'm gonna hold it until we get
through the rest of this story. On December four, and
North Korea officially denies any involvement in the Sony hack.
Like Shaggy and MC. Some of the older members of
our audience may remember he said it wasn't me. Wow,
(02:53):
that's not bad. Hey, Shaggy formally a marine as well.
But I didn't see that coming. It wasn't But this, uh,
these leaked emails are still coming out. Journalists are all
over this, scouring the documents. Uh the spokesperson and I
remember we said that December four, right, North Korea officially
(03:16):
says it wasn't me and uh. December eighth, however, a
spokesperson for North Korea says the cyber attack might have
been a righteous deed of supporters and sympathizers, but it
wasn't directly linked to us, which is very similar to
some of the stuff we've heard from state sponsored cyber
(03:36):
attacks via Moscow via Beijing. Um, and I'm sure that
you know, I'm sure that Uncle Sam's doing a couple too. Yeah. Hey,
that was officially not the United States. That's the old
plank in the eye thing and get the spec out
of your eye. But there's a plank in mind, right,
(03:57):
So this continues though. Yeah, and then on December ninth,
there was a message posted to get hub which was
allegedly from the Guardians of Peace. Now, it is extremely
difficult to verify whether or not, and an anonymous message
like that is from the same person that posted the
other anonymous thing. This is this is like attributing anything
to the group Anonymous, where where Anonymous itself is not
(04:20):
a cohesive group with a single leader. It's actually a
sort of a morphous semi organization. And you could even
have one group of people within that organization want to
do something. Yeah, exactly, So well in that light, since
we're not sure if this message came from the same
people that you did the Voice of Ben, would you
(04:42):
mind doing an evil voice or like an evil voice,
or however you want to spend it, stop immediately showing
the movie of terrorism which could back the regional peace
then cause the war. See added that sea at the end,
we know nothing about the darting email or see by
Sony staff see, but you should judge why it's by yourself,
why such things are happening and who is responsible for
(05:03):
what you Sony and FBI cannot find us amazing. So
so this, this supposed representative of Guardians of Peace, denies
knowledge of a previous message also supposedly from Guardians of Peace.
But it's also for the first time in the messages
(05:23):
from these guys saying stop the movie of terrorism. It
does not say the interview, right, but it's specifically talking
about a movie. Else is a stop immediately showing and
the movie hadn't come out yet. Uh December ten, though
they get this message gets a little bit of street
cred courtesy of Joe Demost, assistant director for the FBI
(05:45):
Cyber Division. Yeah, he was talking at a cybersecurity conference
when he said, quote, there is no this is on
December tenth, quote there is no attribution to North Korea
at this point. The speaking of the attack the Sony hack, right,
And it's been described by a private security firm named
fire Eye as an unparalleled, well planned crime carried out
(06:08):
by an organized group for which neither spe nor any
other companies could have been fully prepared. So that's Sony
Picture Entertainment. So they say there's no way to prepare
for this sort of level. Uh, this sort of cyberus,
you know. But they also discussed how they were criticizing
Sony for their security. Um, they're saying that there were
(06:29):
a lot of backdoors and and essentially little uh let's
just I don't know if you call loopholes, but fairly
easy ways of gaining access. Sure, I mean backdoors is
probably the best way of putting it. Like, the two
things you've got to worry about with your your online
security is just the value of the security system and
then the value of the people who use it. Those
(06:51):
are the two elements. Well, we know that for instance,
with I Love they brought up steck stucks Net earlier
because one of the things that was abundantly clear about
stucks net this this was this was a program most
likely created by Israel and the United States working together, right,
And what it did was it altered the speed of
(07:12):
center fuges in the nuclear processing in or on and uh.
And then screwed up the entire nuclear UH facility, or
at least the process of refining this. Those computers, however,
were offline, which means that the only way that stucks
net could be introduced into that system would be what
(07:32):
via USB driving thumb thumb drive of some sort or
some other some other physical delivery system, which would mean
getting physical access to those machines, which would mean either
infiltrating the the system entirely, well as in having a
like a cover agent going in and becoming part of this,
or more likely using social engineering to get access UH,
(07:56):
using just simple lying to people. It's really see if
I walk into a company and I tell an overworked
receptionist that I'm there because there was an I t
issue that and I need access to a certain floor
more nine times ten I get that access. Really well,
(08:18):
why do you think I'm not my desk so much
during the day? What happened to the old janitor buddy?
That's that's a really good point that the human element
is often going to be what compromises a system. Sure,
and we also know that Seth Rogan and James Franco
of course have some stuff to say about this. I mean,
I don't know if they still get paid if the
(08:38):
movie doesn't come out the way it was supposed to. Um.
I yeah, I don't know if the full contract was
released in the hacks. If it was, I have not
read it. I just talked about the money that they
made for the films. But one thing I do know
is that they went on Howard Sterns Show on the
fifte of December and in discussions with Mr Stern, I
(09:00):
just wanted to read this one quote from Seth Rogan.
He says, I can't do an impression. Seth Rogan, man,
I wish I could. All Right, I believe in you, dude,
he says, Now, no one has definitively told us that
North Korea is who did that. One day, I'm like,
it's for sure them, And the next day I'm like,
there's no way it's them. It seems too it seems
(09:22):
too savvy of Hollywood politics. And he's speaking as a
producer of the film, um, you know, and director and writer.
And when they were talking about this stuff, they were
just speaking about some of the more insider information that
was leaked, and why would they leak all of that stuff?
Why would North Korea care about that. Why would North
Korea be aware that that itself would be the key
(09:46):
to UH to causing action to happen, especially since North
Korea didn't if it were, if it was in fact
North Korea and the interview was in fact the reason
for it, why wasn't that at ever part of the
messaging at the initial messaging? Right? Why is the messaging
seemed to evolve? And uh, speaking of evolving, we know
(10:09):
in December sixteen they up the stakes and specified the
interview itself when they said that movie theaters showing this
feature would be attacked in a quote here nine eleven
style and what they said, and that, I mean, if
you want to hit a hot button like nerve in
the American psychling, that's all you have to say. And
as Jon Stewart said, I had no idea that was
(10:32):
a style. Now, yeah, and yes, And then you you
go back to our recent memory, you think about the
Batman shooting at a movie theater in Colorado, Yeah, and
you just it kind of conjures a lot of images. Well, yeah,
there there have been actual acts of terror, depending upon
you know, how you look at at the definition. But
(10:54):
there have been acts of terror that have taken place
inside UH movie theaters in the United States, and so
this was a very evocative kind of message. It's one
that a lot of companies took very serious for for
understandable reasons. I mean, there was a lot of backlash
for the for their their actions, that action being that
(11:16):
Car Mike theaters began to cancel screenings of the Interview
and that was followed by every other major UH theater chain,
to the point where it would looked like the only
place you were going to see The Interview for a
while was going to be in these tiny, little independent
arthouse theaters, which is the weirdest thing in the world.
This is a major film from a major motion picture
(11:39):
studio that would only get seen in art house pictures
at artnhouse theaters. And then you don't even get that.
So Sony announces the cancelation of the whole theatrical release.
And mind you, this is after car Mike begins sets
off that domino, after they canceled the premiere on summary
team right right, And not only did they announce the
(12:02):
cancelation of the theatrical release, they went further than that.
They said that this movie would not be released in
any format for at least the foreseeable future. So they
were saying at that time, they were saying it's not
going to come out in video on demand because a
lot of people said, why don't you just release a
video on demand? Yeah, they can't attack us all and
then yeah, they're not going to come into our homes,
(12:24):
but there's there's not gonna be that you could or
you could do it as uh, you know, DVD or
blue ray. But they were saying, no, we have no
plans to release this film in any form and read
it even banned a couple of users. That's how you
know stuff's getting real for sharing some leaked documents and
I think for possibly trying to find the actual interview
(12:47):
the the actual movie. So so remember back on the tenth,
the FBI said there is no link, no attribution right
then on the UM and I hate to use this
quote on anymous White House officials, but that's how the
Guardian reported it. UM anonymous White House officials say that
the US has evidence that the hack was coordinated by
(13:10):
North Korea. Now there's some words in there that they're
a little vague I think on purpose. Yeah, coordinated could
mean that North Korea could have been essentially the the
if you want to think about the money behind the
attacks attack, and then they essentially hire out our contract
(13:30):
out hackers, possibly in some place like China or Russia
where we know there are a lot of state sponsored
hackers and already um and use them to perpetuate this attack.
And then yet still could come come out and say, hey,
we didn't do it right, and we see what's funny
about the statement too. I think you make a great
(13:50):
case for the word coordinated. Folks, ladies, and gentlemen. Whenever
you read a report that says anonymous White House officials
or a government official who did not want to be named,
that means that they're giving a leak with the with
the blessing of whichever institution they originate from. And also
(14:12):
it's meant to avoid some responsibility of an official statement,
so that anonymous White House official who said that everybody
everybody in the White House was like, yeah, that's fine,
but you know, don't say your name, don't say you
said it. Yeah, it's so weird how that works. The
(14:32):
strategic leaking of information like that. I wish I could
strategically leak information like that, just strategically leak I've just
been leaving a trail all of the time. So yeah,
so we've solved one mystery on the show already. Um,
we know that President Obama says he has a problem
with Sony refusing to release the interview. You know, it's
(14:55):
bowing to terrorism, so he officially something later. Well, and
this was the backlash I was talking about earlier, right, Yet,
there were a lot of people who immediately criticized the
theater chains for for pulling it out, and then later
criticizing Sony for saying that they were not going to
release it under any format. And these were people, and
I include myself in this, who didn't necessarily have any
(15:17):
desire to see the movie. They just didn't like the
precedent this was setting. Personally, I didn't like the precedent
of saying your threats are effective and therefore you can
affect me. Because here two thousand fourteen was the year
of the security breach you had. You had so many
companies hit by different security breaches andsoft eBay, mount Cox
(15:42):
Target whether that was technically to but but the fallout continued.
The CEO of Targets stepped down because of those. So
we've had a whole year of security breaches, and then
when you have this happen and you have a threat,
a non specific threat come in and then you see
this dramatic reaction to it. The message that sends out
(16:03):
to everybody, the perpetrators and everybody else is that with
some effort, you, an individual or small group of individuals,
can impact an enormous number of people, an entire industry
of people. And that opens the floodgates for people to say, well, heck,
I could do that. I mean, even just for for
(16:24):
for giggles, Like, I don't have any ideological problem with anybody,
but the thought of being able to affect that many
people is really appealing to a certain group of folks. Yeah,
I mean, how far are we are we from a
supervillain just co opting YouTube and appearing and being like,
you know, attention America, if you do not immediately reassemble
(16:47):
the cast of Night Cart, that will be grave consequences. Yeah,
I'm I'm going after Pauti Pie. That's what I'm'm just
gonna appear in. From of all so well, I'd just
like to say that it's not releasing this movie at all.
If that is indeed what happens, which it doesn't seem
to be, you know what's going to happen. But if
(17:07):
they did that, then it would be effectively paying a
forty seven million dollar ransom or however much it costs
to create the film, plus whatever money they would have
made opening day on Christmas when everybody goes to see movies,
and having the cancel those public appearances too, Oh yeah,
like the Night Show they didn't go on there, all
those things. It's just crazy to think if you cave
(17:28):
to this, just what you're giving up and the FBI
comes back around and now we're getting closer and closer
to the present day, because they say In a statement
released on Friday this via The Guardian, the FBI said
a technical analysis of the malignant software known as malware
that used in the attack has been linked to other
(17:50):
malware uh that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed.
There were similarities and specific lines of code, encryption algorithms,
data deletion methods, and compromise networks. The FBI said, I
like how they explain malware, but not encryption algorithms. Hware.
You know, that's what we used to call viruses because
(18:11):
I use that accent because it was the Guardian. So
so there's another interesting phase here, North Korean actors. This
is all a slow bill towards my theory. North Korean actors. Uh,
that's not necessarily a member of the North Korean government. No,
it could be someone who appears in a theatrical production
of the Makado North Korea, or perform one super adamant
(18:36):
North Korean dude. It's like, no, you can't have that movie.
So yeah. This is also something else I should point
out is that code, whether or not it originates in
a particular country, doesn't belong there. Like as soon as
it gets out in the wild, it's out there and
people will make use of whatever works. So it's possible
to impersonate code. It's it's well, it's impossible to to
(18:59):
appropriate and then use it for your own purposes. In fact,
there are hackers out there, and I use hackers very
loosely in this sense, that don't ever write any code themselves.
With script kitties, they get hold of code that's been
previously written and they repurpose it for something else, and
often they do it with minimum alteration or maybe no
(19:21):
alteration at all. This is a great way of saying
how the Sony hack was inherently different from the d
D o S attacks that brought down Microsoft Xbox Live
during the same time frame, because that was a simple
d D o S attack, which I was telling Matt earlier,
that's that's kind of like the equivalent of me walking
up to one of you while you're trying to work
(19:41):
and go, hey, what you're doing, what you're doing, Hey,
what you're doing. What you're doing, what you're doing, what
you're doing, what you're working on, what you're doing, and
just doing that all day long. You can't get anything
done because I'm irritating you. And that's exactly what happens
with the d d S attack. Well, that's a that's
a very unsophisticated attack, right, It's it's just throwing a
hammer at somebody. This attack was much more robust, much
(20:05):
more It involved way more levels than just ADDS attacks,
much more sophisticated, exactly. And it's like sneaking in at night,
setting up and booby trapping your entire house and then
waiting till you're at work the next day and just
setting it it's home alone. It's McCauley Culkins possibly involved. No,
he was not involved. Was that kids think Kevin? Was
he Kevin and Home Alone? Yeah, so now we know
(20:28):
what Kevin's doing. He's hacking. He's hacking into Home Alone seven.
That's but no, I mean, this is the reason why
I bring all that up is that it is possible
that someone could be using code that does in fact
have code coming from North Korea and not be connected
to North Korea. It's also possible the other ways, or
(20:50):
maybe using you on purpose because it did come from
North Korea. And in the murky world of espionage, those
kind of things are not impossible. I mean, I don't
know if they're they are possible. I think it's a
leap to say they're plausible. But what what about this?
Here's an interesting statistic. North Korea has about a thousand
(21:12):
email addresses, and for comparison, you can find about that
many according to a recent story by MPR, you can
find a thousand email addresses in maybe a block of
New York City. Yeah, I mean, I've got like four
year fifty myself. That's true, that's probably that's probably an exaggeration, right,
(21:33):
So on the whole Uh, the North Korean population is
not full of you know tech literati, Well they're they're
most of them are not allowed to have any connection
to the internet. This there's a couple of other interesting
points that have kind of unraveled over the last couple
of days as we record this. One is that the uh,
(21:56):
the Internet in North Korea suffered some major slowing down
to the point where people were saying no one would
be able to connect, and that raised questions and we
don't have answers for this. They raised the question of
is this at all connected to this sony hack? Was
it a retaliation because there was a statement of there
would be a proportional response to any attack that was
(22:18):
against the United States, So how do you what's a
what's proportionate to having a company have this North Korean film?
Do you do you shut down the military and government
access to the Internet because that's that's pretty much the
only people in North Korea who have the access we're
talking about, or was it some totally unrelated group that
(22:42):
decided to take it upon themselves kind of the way
North Korea was saying, Hey, it wasn't us, but whoever
it was, you guys are awesome, So is it the
same thing? But now going against North Korea or could
it just be a system failure that has nothing to
do with any of this, And the the pure answer
is that we do not know. Only the people who
(23:04):
would be responsible would know if in fact someone's responsible.
You know. There's also the there's also the possibility that
due to international tensions between the triumvirates here of North Korea, China,
the United States, we shall also had South Korea and Japan. Uh.
There there's a possibility that this might be handled in
(23:26):
backdoor channels differently than it's handled in the public sphere.
And this is something that quite often happens um in
in dealings between North Korea and many other many other countries. UH.
And I know this because during the nuclear during the
last round of failed nuclear talks, a North Korean um,
(23:50):
a member of the North Korean Foreign Ministry and his
entourage visited the school I was at at the time,
and their conversation was completely different worlds away from what
you would see on North Korea's official website, which you
can't visit and is in English and Korea. Yeah, he
was telling me about that. I don't know if you
(24:12):
want to read it. I mean, I think, I think
part of that is, like, you know, the idea of
saving face, the whole idea of how can we diffuse
the situation where no one looks like they are backing
down or apologizing or weak. No one can look weak.
Speaking of that, on December nineteen, we were talking about this, Jonathan,
(24:33):
North Korea offered to set up a joint inquiry with
the United States to find out who was behind this hack. Yeah,
they said, we don't. We don't approve of all the
things that have happened. We do think that they had
a noble goal in the sense that this movie is
an insult. But we didn't. We weren't responsible, and we
will help you find out who is in the United
States said, thanks, no thanks, But but here's the here's
(24:55):
the thing. There are so many different layers here, right,
the layer of there's the perception of whether or not
North Korea is being sincere, and it's offer whether whether
they're being whether they are trustworthy, whether we genuinely believe
North Korea to be behind the attacks, and we we
we in this room, can't say whether or not the
(25:17):
US government genuinely believes that. Um. One of the things
that that came up in the discussion Matt and I
had was that a lot of the there's no smoking
gun pointing at North pointing from North Korea for this
particular incident that we are aware of, but that doesn't
mean there isn't one. There could be one that the
(25:38):
FBI is fully aware of but has not made at
all public, and therefore there it could They could be
completely sincere when they say we believe North Korea to
be behind this right and what would the relationship be?
I love that point because there is not an easy
black and white answer. I have a little bit of
a theory. If you guys would like to hear, I
(25:59):
would love to or your theory. I've got a theory
of my own. So so Japan Right has a part
of it. Yes, you're familiar with its work. Japan has
um a large ethnic Korean population, some of whom are
DPRK sympathizers, and UH DPRK has to add a little
(26:20):
bit to its muddy reputation abroad. Uh it's often been
found as the ringleader for illegal activity such as smuggling
or creation of methamphetamine, creation of the so called Supernoes,
which were fake hundred dollar bills that were really, really
well done, and uh. It is completely possible that one uh,
(26:42):
that one or more ethnic Koreans working in Japan worked
for Sony let open the door, or there was some
sort of exploit that was passed along to hackers. What
I don't think happened. I just don't think that given
all of the other concerns that DPRK has right now,
(27:02):
and it has a lot the relationship with the Soviet
unions pretty much well, the relationship with Russia is pretty
much non existent. The relationship with China is deteriorating, especially
in the wake of Kim Jong Ill's death. I think
this was maybe state approved, but I don't think it
was state spearheaded. If it was, the priorities have to
(27:26):
be way off. It's not necessarily the behavior of a
rational actor unless there's more to the story. So I
think what we're looking at would be contractors, maybe sympathetic
activists of some sort, because there are there are, even
though a lot of people don't know this, there are
quite a few um sympathetic North Korea sympathizers in South
(27:49):
Korea in Japan, some of who are legit spies, but
many of whom I just grew up there and are
just supportive of it. Fun fact, the web master from
North Korea is from Spain. He is a Spanish national
m's and North Korea has three web hosts, so I
think it's much more likely that this attack originated from
a country with better equipment. I agree with that. I
(28:12):
think I'll go a step further based upon the fact
that we see no real mention of the interview the
movie of terrorism in these early attempts where the it
seems like it's more of extortion, pay us or this
stuff gets released, not stop doing this horrible thing. There's
no like the reason why we're doing this is because
(28:35):
of this, Now give us money or else were releases.
None of that was there. I think that this, to me,
it seems like it could be at least partially an
inside job that, like you were saying, it's someone who
is familiar with Sony systems. A lot of the information
I've read seems to indicate that the attackers at least
had some password access to certain systems at the get go,
(28:58):
which is not the easiest thing to get unless you
already have it, because they went through multiple systems, So
I'm I'm thinking that it was at least partially an
inside job, probably not directly related to anything with the interview.
At the beginning, it was only to me. It seems
like that was a leap on opportunity. After after the
(29:22):
after other people started bringing it up, they're like, oh, wow, crap,
we should totally say that's the reason. Yeah, that was
that was our plan the whole time. Yeah. Now, now again,
this is based on the information that's available to us, right,
and so we're only we're drawing some conclusions based upon
limited amounts of information. If this were office space, we
(29:43):
would have the leap to conclusions Matt out and we
would be shopping away. So I want to stress that
because even though that's something that I personally kind of
have a gut feeling about, I'm also more than happy
to I'm ready to say, Look, I could totally be
wrong and it not take a lot to prove that
I'm wrong. However, just from my own perspective this whole time,
(30:06):
I've been a little skeptical of the North Korea connection.
I guess it could be like a North Korea approved thing,
or even a North Korea sponsored thing, but it just
it seems like it seems like the actual attack and
the language used as extortion at the beginning, and the
method of embarrassing the company comes from a much more
(30:29):
insider perspective than at another country that's upset. It seems
personal to me. So then we've got some other possibilities here.
Right now, you're not gonna let me have my theory. No,
that was the intro to your theory. Oh man, thank
you for trying my theory. I apology. I apologize. So
(30:51):
I want to bring in the overall digital rights management
arguments and argument. This is someone who's upset that they
put the Sony c D way back in the day,
the back door attack on their computer. No, no, okay,
the idea of this guy has been a hard a
grudge since. Oh yeah, that's true. I mean no. So
(31:12):
the idea of structure controls over the Internet that have
been attempted to be put into legislation in the United
States several times and shot down spectacularly by the Internet
a couple of times. You're talking about it in the leaks, right,
they were talking about in the leaks and the m
p a A in general trying to work kind of
(31:33):
against Google. I don't know if you've seen Goliath. Oh yeah,
I mean Goliath. Yeah, come on, yes, no, I haven't heard.
Can tell me more about it, tell the tech guy
more about Okay, Well that's why. That's this is the
main reason I wanted you to be in this room.
Besides having all the other knowledge, shanthan to talk about
Goliath because I don't know enough about it. I've barely
(31:55):
touched the surface on it, and Ben and I will
have to do another full show just on that subject. Absolutely,
so there is to me. And this is just Matt
Frederick's opinion. Everybody, This seems like a an opportunity. Whether
or not who did it doesn't matter, um, an opportunity
for those people who want stricter controls and security controls
(32:17):
over the Internet and search controls through Google for pirate
of material and all this stuff. It seems like a
great opportunity for them to really say, hey, guys, look
at all the damage this cause. Look at all the
monetary and personal just damage that's been caused here. We
need your help, please secure the Internet for freedom. This
(32:38):
is uh, this is absolutely what's gonna happen. You're gonna
see lots of companies that have a vested interest in
keeping their intellectual property private from you know, jumping at
every single possible opportunity to do so to to protect themselves,
even at the expense of the ability for the rest
of us to use the Internet the way we've become
(32:58):
accustomed to. However, that being set and it's a very
difficult argument to make from that perspective, simply because the
damage that was done to Sony went well beyond a
few movies being linked to the Internet. In fact, if
you were to argue that that was the major cost
of the damages, everyone would laugh at you, because you
(33:18):
know it's it's hundreds of millions of dollars potentially. And
you know, we've had this discussion before too that that
a stolen movie doesn't necessarily mean a lost ticket sale.
Like one, you can't guarantee that the person wouldn't go
and see it anyway, or two that the person would
have seen it had they not pirateed it. That's another argument.
I think that it's one of those things that's going
(33:39):
to ramp up the discussion about Internet security. It's going
to end up having a lot of companies propose changes
that would be restrictive, but I don't think it's gonna
go much further than that. And part of the reason
for that is also that we have, simultaneously going on
while this hack is unfolding, the ongoing discussion about reclassifying
(34:03):
Internet in the United States as a utility, which would
give the FCC the authority to actually impose net neutrality
rules which were struck down at the beginning of two
thousand fourteen. Well, yeah, but the problem there is going
to be job security. I mean, who's the FEC gonna
work for. Like the individuals in the FCC, I have
(34:24):
to think about their career traject right. They have to
figure out how where am I going to get those
huge bags of money that they left at my stup?
You can't walk around with an empty burlap sack in
it and a cash sign on it. If anyone for
the FCC is listening, I don't necessarily abscribe abscribe to this, uh,
this scenario that Mr Boland is putting forward. I do
(34:45):
I get the I'll get the email where uh they'll say,
don't release this podcast or you will be destroyed. Like
do you understand how the internet works? It's already out
there right right, I know, I know I'm ribbing the
FEC a little bit and the people at that agency
have at times done fantastic work, and it can be
(35:06):
really difficult when there's so much money involved. Let's talk
about Project Goliath, though, because you're really interested in this,
and it's it's a strange it's a strange actual conspiracy,
not a theory, but a group of individuals coming together
to make a move on what they call Goliath. Yeah,
using code words, whatever that is. Well, I mean you've
(35:26):
got to use co words because you never know when
your communications are going to get leaked to the public.
And if you are not covering your tracks and everyone
automatically knows you're talking about Google, then and credit the
the secrecy, the veil of secrecy that Goliath provided was
not terribly thick. I mean, all of Jonathan's emails are
in code. Yeah, that's why. That's why you know the
(35:49):
subject red dog flies at one and you're like, oh,
it's that art I asked for for that article. Uh yeah,
it's hey, it's a red dog flying at one o'clock.
I thought it was lunch. I thought we were getting
hot talks. But you know I always eat it like
eat or yeah. Yeah, so that's red bull at um. Yeah. No,
it's it's so the Goliath. The Goliath story is only
(36:13):
partially related, partly because some of the information was gathered
from this league. But it is a collection of different
really big entities mostly Yeah, yeah, that are all concerned. Disney,
isn't there too, I believe, concerned about Goliath's uh influence
(36:36):
on their industry and how they can somehow mitigate that. Um,
and you're right, it would go there'd be a whole
episode when we'd have to go into a whole episode
to really talk about it. Well, maybe this is where
we kind of tease that sometime in the future we're
gonna have a Goliath episode. Yeah, would you like to
come back? We have to, We'd love to have you because, uh,
(36:56):
this this is an interesting thing, and I want to
just do the quick and dirty in the interest of
fairness thing that we have to say. Sure Goliath and
I can't finger quote hard enough there and the studios
opposing it, along with the m p A. M p
A A have different goals, but it's not so much
moral argument on either side as it is which environment
(37:19):
is better for our current business. Yeah, so it's no,
I mean not like there's a hero in a villain Google.
Google's slogan is don't be evil, but it is a
business and we we are the product. Just like in Facebook,
you are the product. Same thing with Google. I mean,
Google is not a search engine company, it's an ad company.
(37:40):
But Jonathan, isn't money the root of all evil? I
swear you are wrong. It is the love of money
that is the root of all evil. Money itself is
not the root of all you But what, okay, then,
what is correctly? I'd like to point out while you're
while you're percultly know, I'd like to point out that
don't be well is a very very different statement from
(38:02):
be good. Sure you could be totally immoral, Isn't that
that is the don't be evil well? To be fair though,
I mean, we're making it sound really really sinister, but
keep in mind it was a couple of college students
(38:22):
who started Google, and they were trying to keep in
mind certain values as this thing they had created ballooned
well beyond their there even their ambition. I mean they
were they are really smart, really hard working guys. But
I think they'd be the first to tell you, like,
you know, if you went back in time and told
Sarah Gey and Larry. Hey, guys, this thing you're working
(38:45):
on is going to turn you into multibillionaires. They be.
They look at you and say what I mean, like,
this is going to take up a sizeable part of
a city in California. I've been to the Google campus.
It is enormous. Um You've got to have a car
or a bike to get around from building to building
because that's how big it is. And this is one company,
(39:07):
you know, it's It's one of those things where I
think they created that slogan at a time when they
were just trying to, you know, keep themselves grounded. It's
just now with the benefit of hindsight, now that we
see Google as this enormous entity, don't be evil, starts
to take on a different connotation to us. So we
just got to remember the perspective. So I want to
add one more thing to the fire here, all right,
(39:29):
Do you think that the people responsible for the two
thousand and eleven heck were also involved in this one?
Could there be an inside person who just hasn't been
caught h R check your employment records. I mean, you
never say never. It just seems to me like this
was something that if if I stick with my insider theory.
(39:53):
It feels to me like this was something that had
been building up for a while for the person or
persons responsible, and there was something that was a tipping
point that caused the person to say, like, all right,
that I'm doing it. I can't. I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna let this happen anymore. I'm not gonna. Um,
you know, I I'm tired of working with a company
(40:16):
that has these policies. Again, that only works if it
fits my theory of what happened. It could obviously be
something totally different, that is I'm completely off base for
and then my answer doesn't make sense. I mean, yeah,
if we're with lack of information, I think it's I
think it's plausible that there was an inside person. Um.
But I'm also very curious about the evolution of this
(40:40):
North Korean conversation because the FBI seems pretty publicly convinced,
and I told Matt, I said, this could be indicative
of one of two things. In my mind, One is
that they in fact do have very compelling evidence that
we are just not aware of, and that North Korea
is in fact responsible. They can't release it because they
illegally gathered it. Whatever, whatever the reasoning behind it, they
(41:02):
have it, they know it, and we just can't be
privy as to how or why. The second part is
to me, the second idea is that the FBI releases
this information in an effort to actually lure out the
people who really did do it. The idea being that, well,
if we put pressure on this group by saying that
it is North Korea, then North Korea is going to
(41:24):
respond in a very antagonistic way. It's going to escalate matters.
It's going to start bringing a lot more pressure on
the group actually responsible. And I don't know about you,
but if I were a hacker and I had caused
this kind of chaos, at first, I'd be thinking, man,
look at Look at what a bad hacker I am. Man,
(41:44):
I look at what I affected. And then, as it
would snowball, I think, WHOA, things are getting out of control.
And then if I get to the point where there's
there are people talking about using words like war and terrorism,
I'm thinking this went way out of proportion of what
I was expecting. I wanted to cause this company problems,
so I didn't want to capitulate the war the world
(42:05):
into war and death. So then you get but then
you have this FBI group saying, well, you know, it's
clearly North Korea. Meanwhile they're thinking, all right, let's see
who squirms. Yeah, yeah, right, let's see which dog barks. Guys.
I'm so happy that we covered this. Yeah, I know,
especially for Ben and I, it's a little different because
we generally don't cover things that are happening now like
(42:27):
this is still happening. There's gonna be a more information
that comes out here this. There may be evidence that
ends up making a lot of the things I said,
mood it was Bhutan the whole time. But thank you
so much for joining us for this conversation. Everybody, um
and especially Jonathan. Yeah, where can people see more of
(42:48):
your stuff? Well, they could go to If you want
the super optimistic, happy version of the future, you should
go to fw thinking dot com. That's forward thinking dot com.
That's where I I look at the future in all
different aspects, not just science and technology, but culture, and
it is uh, you know, kind of the bright shiny version,
not the dark gloomy version. If you want the dark
(43:08):
gloomy version, sometimes I cover that on my other show
Tex Stuff, which is a podcast you can subscribe to
publishes twice a week, which several times Ben has been
on several times. Yes, we did an excellent episode about ambulances.
We've had a lot of positive feedback from people in
the industry on that one. Yeah, that's great. And then
also you can catch me on brain Stuff and What
(43:29):
the Stuff where I end up being a dude on
video who talks about things and weird locations occasionally. Yeah,
and you can visit you can visit those sites at
house stuff Works as YouTube page. There's a there's a
great one you did recently for brain Stuff on Old
Timey Voices. That was a ton of fun, the Transatlantic accent,
(43:50):
and as it got a lot of really great feedback,
it was featured quite a few times in different places. Uh.
And also keep an eye out there will be a
What the Stuff that comes out in which Ben and
I both appear in the same episode. Oh yeah, I
just saw that picture. That's so. Speaking of feedback, we
(44:12):
would love to hear your take on the North Korea. Uh, well,
the alleged North Korea hacks in in Sony. So find
us on Facebook and Twitter where we are Conspiracy Stuff.
Check out our podcast on our blog or iTunes. However,
you get there, and that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
(44:36):
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std w y t K. If you don't want to
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
they Don't want you to Know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
(44:59):
visit the i heart radio a app, Apple Podcasts, or
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