Swedish Prosecutors to Drop Sexual Assault Investigation Against Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange

The statute of limitations has done run out, heh.

And the freak Assange is still holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

The fucker's gonna skate like a bird now.

At the BBC, "Julian Assange case: Sweden to drop sex assault inquiry."

Also at Euronews, "Sweden to drop sex assault investigations into Wikileaks founder."

Hackers Trick Email Systems Into Wiring Them Large Sums

It's a jungle out there.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Cybercriminals are exploiting publicly available information and weaknesses in corporate email systems to trick small businesses into transferring large sums of money into fraudulent bank accounts."

Cyberattack Can't Be Ruled Out for New York Stock Exchange Outage, Say Analysts

No, not at all.

I mean c'mon, all these outlets went down simultaneously, WSJ, NYSE, United Airlines? Yeah, musta been a glitch (rolls eyes).

At the Epoch Times:

Trading in securities was suspended on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday at 11:32 a.m. “All open orders will be canceled. Additional information will follow as soon as possible,” stated a brief message on its website.

What exactly caused the shutdown is still under investigation, yet foul play could be a factor.

Two major issues have hit the global stock markets hard. Stock markets around the world fell on Monday after the “no” vote in the Greece referendum. In China, things are even more severe, where its stock bubble burst and its markets have plummeted around $3.25 trillion in value.

“I would say there is a high probability that adversarial nation-states are behind it, based on their increasingly advanced capabilities and brazenness,” said Casey Fleming, CEO of BLACKOPS Partners Corporation, which does counterintelligence and protection of trade secrets for Fortune 500 companies.

The NYSE, on its twitter account, quickly denied the possibility of a breach: “The issue we are experiencing is an internal technical issue and is not the result of a cyber breach.”

The attacks on NYSE and United Airlines are being reported as separate incidents with separate causes, but being publicly-traded companies they have to be careful about what they say. The cybersecurity community, in particular, is still not ruling out the possibility of a cyberattack.

According to cybersecurity news service, The Cyberwire, “Early indications are that there’s no sign of cyber attack, but of course this bears watching.”

Fleming noted, the Chinese stock exchange is down 25 percent this week, and “there is a possibility they are trying to manufacture a softer landing to the forecast hard landing.”

A representative from the New York Stock Exchange gave only vague details. Marissa Arnold, an NYSE spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement simply that, “We’re currently experiencing a technical issue that we’re working to resolve as quickly as possible,” and noting that updates will be provided “as soon as we can.”

Fleming emphasized that it could also be an unrelated error, and that hackers may have nothing to do with the system going down. “It could be someone left a soda can on top of a server in the data center, or a rat chewing on a cable.”

“But the coincidence is way too high,” he said, noting that several systems seem to have gone down around the same time. “United Airlines was down after a computer glitch, other websites are down, and now the New York Stock Exchange is down.”

PREVIOUSLY: "Cyberwarfare in Real Time," and "New York Stock Exchange Hit by Glitches or Hacked?"

Cyberwarfare in Real Time

At Zero Hedge, "Is This What the First World Cyber War Looks Like: Global Real Time Cyber Attack Map":

After a series of cyber failures involving first UAL, then this website, then the NYSE which is still halted, then the WSJ, some have suggested that this could be a concerted cyber attack (perhaps by retaliatory China unhappy its stocks are plunging) focusing on the US. So we decided to look at a real-time cyber attack map courtesy of Norsecorp which provides real time visibility into global cyber attacks.

What clearly stands out is that for some reason Chinese DDOS attacks/hackers seem to be focusing on St. Louis this morning.

Click through for the attack graphic.

PREVIOUSLY: "New York Stock Exchange Hit by Glitches or Hacked?"

New York Stock Exchange Hit by Glitches or Hacked?

You just don't get "glitches" on the NYSE. Nope, not buying it for a minute.

See BGR Media, "Do They Think We’re Idiots? Officals Say No Indication that NYSE Trading Halt is a Cyberattack":

The New York Stock Exchange has been shut down after reports from earlier this morning indicated the exchange was having technical difficulties processing orders. Despite this, the Department of Homeland Security has issued a statement saying that there are no indications that this is part of a cyberattack, although they also haven’t put out any statement about what the actual problem might be.

The reason we’re viewing this skeptically right now is that all United Airlines flights this were grounded due to computer glitches. What’s more The Wall Street Journal’s website similarly went down at around the same time that NYSE suspended its trading. What’s more, hugely popular financial blog Zero Hedge also went down this morning along with multiple Dow Jones websites.

While this isn’t definitive proof that there’s a massive hack going on, it would also be a huge coincidence to imagine that the world’s biggest financial newspaper and the New York Stock Exchange would both go down at once.

So what could be going on? Financial analyst Josh Brown speculates that China is likely involved. On his Twitter feed, Brown says that DHS officials are “lying or wrong” about there being no indication of there being a cyberattack. He speculates that China has not been happy about WSJ’s coverage of its own recent stock market woes and says it “isn’t happy with the way our financial media is reporting on its financial market woes.” China this week announced major trading restrictions that have frozen traders out of 72% of the market.

Again, this is all speculation, but this doesn’t strike us as a particularly crazy explanation...

A certain country isn’t happy with the way our financial media is reporting on its financial market woes.

— Downtown Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) July 8, 2015

You’ve never seen me endorse a conspiracy theory before. This one is the real thing.

— Downtown Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) July 8, 2015

Department of Homeland Security: "no signs of malicious activity at this time" re: the New York Stock Exchange

— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) July 8, 2015

They’re lying or wrong. https://t.co/4Dzyb5fmXe

— Downtown Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) July 8, 2015

Seems pretty obviouis to me.

Cybersecurity and US-China International Relations

In light of the supposedly catastrophic OPM hack, I went back to the Winter issue of International Security to read Professor Jon Lindsay's lead article, "The Impact of China on Cybersecurity: Fiction and Friction" (in PDF here).

A great piece, non-alarmist, with a fabulous 4x4 typology on the nature of international cyber threat narratives.

Fortunately, Lindsay has a beautiful summary of the article at the Huffington Post, "Inflated Cybersecurity Threat Escalates US-China Mistrust":

Excited to see Jon Lindsay's policy brief on China and exaggerated #cybersecurity fears published @TheWorldPost: http://t.co/0zaTxFuj1G.

— Internat'l Security (@Journal_IS) May 18, 2015

The rhetorical spiral of mistrust in the Sino-American relationship threatens to undermine the mutual benefits of the information revolution. Fears about the paralysis of the United States' digital infrastructure or the hemorrhage of its competitive advantage are exaggerated.

Policymakers in the United States often portray China as posing a serious cybersecurity threat. In 2013 U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon stated that Chinese cyber intrusions not only endanger national security but also threaten U.S. firms with the loss of competitive advantage.

One U.S. member of Congress has asserted that China has "laced the U.S. infrastructure with logic bombs." Chinese critics, meanwhile, denounce Western allegations of Chinese espionage and decry National Security Agency (NSA) activities revealed by Edward Snowden.

The People's Daily newspaper has described the United States as "a thief crying 'stop thief.'" Chinese commentators increasingly call for the exclusion of U.S. internet firms from the Chinese market, citing concerns about collusion with the NSA, and argue that the institutions of internet governance give the United States an unfair advantage.

Chinese cyber operators face underappreciated organizational challenges, including information overload and bureaucratic compartmentalization, which hinder the weaponization of cyberspace or absorption of stolen intellectual property.

More important, both the United States and China have strong incentives to moderate the intensity of their cyber exploitation to preserve profitable interconnections and avoid costly punishment. The policy backlash against U.S. firms and liberal internet governance by China and others is ultimately more worrisome for U.S. competitiveness than espionage; ironically, it is also counterproductive for Chinese growth.

The United States is unlikely to experience either a so-called digital Pearl Harbor through cyber warfare or death by a thousand cuts through industrial espionage. There is, however, some danger of crisis miscalculation when states field cyberweapons.

The secrecy of cyberweapons' capabilities and the uncertainties about their effects and collateral damage are as likely to confuse friendly militaries as they are to muddy signals to an adversary.

Unsuccessful preemptive cyberattacks could reveal hostile intent and thereby encourage retaliation with more traditional (and reliable) weapons. Conversely, preemptive escalation spurred by fears of cyberattack could encourage the target to use its cyberweapons before it loses the opportunity to do so. Bilateral dialogue is essential for reducing the risks of misperception between the United States and China in the event of a crisis.

Keep reading.

St. Louis Cardinals Investigated by F.B.I. for Hacking Astros

Talk about a change of pace, wow.

At the New York Times, "Cardinals Face F.B.I. Inquiry in Hacking of Astros’ Network":

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors are investigating whether front-office officials for the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the most successful teams in baseball over the past two decades, hacked into internal networks of a rival team to steal closely guarded information about player personnel.

Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials broke into a network of the Houston Astros that housed special databases the team had built, according to law enforcement officials. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, the officials said.

The officials did not say which employees were the focus of the investigation or whether the team’s highest-ranking officials were aware of the hacking or authorized it. The investigation is being led by the F.B.I.’s Houston field office and has progressed to the point that subpoenas have been served on the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for electronic correspondence.

The attack represents the first known case of corporate espionage in which a professional sports team has hacked the network of another team. Illegal intrusions into companies’ networks have become commonplace, but it is generally conducted by hackers operating in foreign countries, like Russia and China, who steal large tranches of data or trade secrets for military equipment and electronics.

Major League Baseball “has been aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database,” a spokesman for baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, said in a written statement.

The Cardinals officials under investigation have not been put on leave, suspended or fired. The commissioner’s office is likely to wait until the conclusion of the government’s investigation to determine whether to take disciplinary action against the officials or the team...

 Fascinating.

Continue reading, as well as the responses at Memeorandum.

ADDED: More from Bill Shaikin:

Whatever it takes? Cardinals under FBI investigation for hacking -- into Astros computers, per @nytimes: http://t.co/ovL7YVwGl8

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) June 16, 2015

MLB statement on alleged hack: League will act "once the investigative process has been completed by federal law enforcement officials."

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) June 16, 2015

Cardinals statement: “The team has fully cooperated with the investigation and will continue to do so."

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) June 16, 2015

More Cardinals: "Given that this is an ongoing federal investigation, it is not appropriate for us to comment further.”

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) June 16, 2015

International Cyberattacks Redefine Warfare

Cyberwarfare is a frontier issue in international security, not as well researched as traditional warfare, and not that well understood, particularly the dangers.

At the Wall Street Journal, "When Does a Hack Become an Act of War?":

WASHINGTON—A tremendous number of personnel records—including some quite personal records—have likely been stolen by computer hackers. The White House won’t say who did it, but a number of U.S. officials and even some lawmakers have said all signs point to China.

The Chinese government has denied it, but the staggering haul of records could amount to one of the biggest feats of espionage in decades.

Right now, the White House and Congress are trying to ascertain what was stolen and how to protect people whose identifies have been compromised, not to mention their “foreign contacts” that are listed on the security clearance forms that could now be on the hard drives of the hackers.

But very soon a much different question will be asked in Washington: If the White House finds out who stole the information, what will President Barack Obama do about it?

Even though large-scale cyberattacks have been used for more than a decade, they have only become extremely effective national-security weapons in the past few years.

In December, the White House accused North Korea of stealing and destroying a large amount of records from Sony Pictures Entertainment. President Barack Obama called it “cyber vandalism,” angering some of his critics who wanted the U.S. government to retaliate.

But cyberattacks by nation-states are a relatively new phenomenon, in which there isn’t a road map of deterrents and responses.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers have said in recent weeks that U.S. policy makers need to decide how they are going to respond to cyberattacks as countries become more brazen in their attempts.

“What we’ve seen in the last six to nine months in general...trends are going in the wrong direction,” Adm. Rogers said in January. “Doing more of the same and expecting different results, my military experience tells me, is not a particularly effective strategy.”

More.

Scroll down at the XX Committee for more, lots more.

U.S. Suspects China in Huge Data Breach

I can't stand the Chinese. Seriously, the more I read about China, Chinese military power, Chinese immigrants, or you name it, the more I loathe the Chinese. #SorryNotSorry.

At the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Suspects Hackers in China Breached About 4 Million People’s Records, Officials Say":

U.S. officials suspect that hackers in China stole the personal records of as many as four million people in one of the most far-reaching breaches of government computers.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing the breach, detected in April at the Office of Personnel Management. The agency essentially functions as the federal government’s human resources department, managing background checks, pension payments and job training across dozens of federal agencies.

Investigators suspect that hackers based in China are responsible for the attack, though the probe is continuing, according to people familiar with the matter. On Thursday, several U.S. officials described the breach as among the largest known thefts of government data in history.

It isn’t clear exactly what was stolen in the hack attack, but officials said the information can be used to facilitate identity theft or fraud. The Department of Homeland Security said it “concluded at the beginning of May” that the records had been taken.

China’s foreign ministry, the cabinet’s information office and the Cyberspace Administration didn’t respond to requests for comment. In response to previous allegations of Chinese hacking and cyber-espionage, Beijing has said that China is also a target of hacking attacks from overseas.

China and the U.S. have sparred over cybersecurity, with the U.S. accusing Chinese government military officers of sustained hacking of U.S. firms for economic advantage. Chinese authorities have denied those accusations.

Investigators believe the attack is separate from a hacking incident detected last year at the Office of Personnel Management. That attack was far smaller, although officials didn’t disclose at the time how many employees were affected. In another apparently unrelated computer attack, Russian hackers are suspected in a large, long-running breach of State Department computers.

In February, The Wall Street Journal reported that the State Department had been unable to evict suspected Russian hackers from its unclassified email system despite months of effort and help from spies and private companies.

The breach disclosed Thursday is the latest sign of the U.S. government’s struggles to protect its own data, even though the Obama administration has spent much of the past year pushing companies to do a better job protecting their computer networks and sharing crucial intelligence on cyber weapons.

Last week, the Internal Revenue Service said identity thieves illegally obtained prior-year tax-return data for more than 100,000 households from an agency website. The criminals used personal data obtained elsewhere to gain access to the tax-return data, the IRS said. The return data can help in filing false refund claims.

The IRS is working on an agreement with tax-preparation firms on ways to strengthen security of the tax system.

The data breach at the Office of Personnel Management is smaller as measured by the number of people affected than some so-called mega breaches in the private sector.

Health insurer Anthem Inc. said earlier this year that hackers gained access to personal information on as many as 80 million customers. Home Depot Inc. said last year that 56 million cards might have been compromised in a five-month attack on its payment terminals.

The Office of Personnel Management hasn’t said how many of the four million people affected by its latest breach are current or former employees or government contractors.

The agency has estimated that there are about 4.2 million federal employees, including 1.5 million who serve as uniformed military personnel.

“We take very seriously our responsibility to secure the information stored in our systems, and in coordination with our agency partners, our experienced team is constantly identifying opportunities to further protect the data with which we are entrusted,” said Katherine Archuleta, director of the Office of Personnel Management...

More.

Plus, at the OPM, "OPM to Notify Employees of Cybersecurity Incident."

Coca-Cola Targets Online Hate with #MakeItHappy Super Bowl Campaign — #DanicaPatrick

At Ad Week.



More videos at the link.

Pamela Geller in Garland, Texas

Pamela headlined a huge free speech really in the Lone Star State yesterday.

At Breitbart Texas, "PAMELA GELLER: MUSLIMS TRYING TO RESTRICT FREE SPEECH IN TEXAS."

Video of Pamela's speech, "Pamela Geller Free Speech Rally, Garland,Texas."

And at iOWNTHEWORLD REPORT, "Success In Garland, Texas":

Pamela’s site is not back and up and running. What you’re seeing online is not a 100% usable site. Pamela is most likely going to abandon it and come back bigger, better and stronger.

This move isn’t entirely due to the attack. She’s been working on a new site prior to the attack (I know this to be true because I’ve been doing some design work on it), so the timing is serendipitous.

Be sure to follow Pamela on Twitter.

Leftist haters gotta hate.

Hackers Take Down Pamela Geller's 'Atlas Shrugs'

I just tried to log on to Pamela' site and got a huge error warning.

She's got an update on Twitter here. And via Twitter, the current message at the error page is here.

It's more than a DDoS attack.

'The Interview' Now Available on Xbox Video

Damn. You gotta love 'Merica!

At the Hollywood Reporter, "'The Interview' Goes to YouTube, Google Play, XBox."

And video at CBS News Los Angeles, "Sony Agrees to Limited Release of 'The Interview'."

Sony CEO Michael Lynton Responds to President Obama (VIDEO)

"We have not caved, we have not given in, we have persevered, and we have not backed down..."

See the Wrap, "Sony CEO Michael Lynton to President Obama: ‘We Have Not Caved’ (Video)."

And watch at CNN:



And ICYMI: "Obama Blames Sony After Failing to Defend Free Speech When it Mattered."

A Reply to Kim's Cyberterrorism

At the Wall Street Journal, "Financial sanctions squeezed the North before and could again":

President Obama vowed in his press conference Friday that the United States “will respond proportionally” to the cyberattack on Sony Pictures, “in a place and time and manner that we choose.” Since the FBI has now concluded the attack was orchestrated by North Korea, a forceful response is essential to deterring future attacks by the world’s rogues. Allow us to offer some suggestions as to what a “proportional” response might be.

As we noted Friday, one good place to start would be for the U.S. government to pay Sony Pictures for the rights to “The Interview” and release the movie for free into the public domain. The comedy, about an assassination attempt on Kim Jong Un, could then be seen by the world and translated into Korean, loaded on USB sticks, and floated into North Korea by balloons.

That would teach Pyongyang a useful lesson in the value the free world attaches to free speech. But the corpulent Korean despot also needs to learn a lesson about the costs of hacking and cyberterrorism, which caused Sony to cancel the movie’s scheduled Christmas release.

The easy place to start would be to once again place North Korea on the list of state sponsors of terrorism—a list from which the Bush Administration unwisely removed it in 2008 in exchange for the late Kim Jong Il ’s fake promises of denuclearization. Putting the North back on the list would be an act of diplomatic hygiene, though it would probably not do much to hurt the Kim regime.

A tougher move would be to reprise the Treasury Department’s 2007 sanctions on Banco Delta Asia, a Macau-based bank that the U.S. accused of being a major money-launderer for Pyongyang. The Kim family is heavily dependent on drug dealing, contraband cigarettes, counterfeit dollars, arms smuggling and other illicit activity for its hard currency earnings, which it then uses as bribes to keep the North’s elite in line. The bank denies the allegations.

The sanctions froze Banco Delta Asia out of conducting dollar-denominated transactions, though their broader effect was to dissuade other banks from doing business with Pyongyang for fear of being similarly sanctioned. It was, by all accounts, the toughest blow the Kim family had ever sustained. “They were not able to pay for gyroscopes for their missile program,” Rep. Ed Royce, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told us Friday. “Their missile line just shut down. The dictator couldn’t pay his generals.”

The Kim regime squealed. In one of their worst diplomatic moves, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush ultimately relented, and it was back to North Korean business as usual. But at least the sanctions demonstrated how vulnerable the Kims were to having their personal finances squeezed. It can be done again...

America's Craven Capitulation to Terror

I'm posting this one FWIW, considering the significant doubts on the origins of the Sony hack.

From David Keyes, at the Daily Beast, "The Sony Hack and America’s Craven Capitulation to Terror":

Americans are giving in to North Korean blackmail — and it will only get worse.

If the noble experiment of American democracy is to mean anything, it is fidelity to the principle of freedom. It is to champion the idea that all men and women are endowed with certain unalienable rights—free to think our thoughts, speak our minds, associate with whom we want and express our feelings without fear that a tyrant will silence us. Slavery is not only the physical restraining of the body. It is also the imprisonment of the mind—the instinct to quiet one’s thoughts in the face of terror.

This is a degrading and shameful state which no man or woman should be forced to endure.

Yesterday, Americans not only endured it—they enabled it. Anonymous hackers, possibly associated with the North Korean regime, made unspecified threats to conduct a 9/11-style attack on theaters that showed “The Interview,” a feature comedy film which pokes fun at Kim Jong Un. Major theaters announced they would not show the movie and Sony pulled it.

On Christmas weekend, a North Korean tyrant has decided what American teenagers will see on the silver screen. Some sympathize with the theaters. Who can blame them? Why would any business expose their customers to potential terror?

This is wrong, dangerous and shameful.

By giving an artistic veto to a madman, we submit to the mindset of a slave. We are no longer sovereigns of our thoughts, comedy and art. If anything is worth fighting for, it is this...

Heh, a little dramatic (although not necessarily disagreeable).

More, at the New Republic (safe link), "Why Aren't We Retaliating Right Now for the Sony Cyberattack?"

More Questions on Who's Behind the Sony Hack?

The dissenting voices on NoKo's complicity are extremely compelling.

Recall Wired's piece from yesterday, "Who's Behind the Sony Hack Attack?"

Now here's Marc Rogers (via Dana Loesch), "Why the Sony hack is unlikely to be the work of North Korea":

Whoever did this is in it for revenge. The info and access they had could have easily been used to cash out, yet, instead, they are making every effort to burn Sony down. Just think what they could have done with passwords to all of Sony’s financial accounts? With the competitive intelligence in their business documents? From simple theft, to the sale of intellectual property, or even extortion – the attackers had many ways to become rich. Yet, instead, they chose to dump the data, rendering it useless. Likewise, I find it hard to believe that a “Nation State” which lives by propaganda would be so willing to just throw away such an unprecedented level of access to the beating heart of Hollywood itself....

Finally, blaming North Korea is the easy way out for a number of folks, including the security vendors and Sony management who are under the microscope for this. Let’s face it – most of today’s so-called “cutting edge” security defenses are either so specific, or so brittle, that they really don’t offer much meaningful protection against a sophisticated attacker or group of attackers. That doesn’t mean that we should let them off and give up every time someone plays the “APT” or “Sophisticated Attacker” card though. This is a significant area of weakness in the security industry – the truth is we are TERRIBLE at protecting against bespoke, unique attacks, let alone true zero days. There is some promising technology out there, but it’s clear that it just isn’t ready yet.

While we are on the subject, and ignoring the inability of traditional AntiVirus to detect bespoke malware, just how did whatever Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution that Sony uses miss terabytes of data flying out of their network? How did their sophisticated on-premise perimeter security appliances miss such huge anomalies in network traffic, machine usage or host relationships? How did they miss Sony’s own edge being hijacked and used as public bittorrent servers aiding the exfiltration of their data? ....

The reality is, as things stand, Sony has little choice but to burn everything down and start again. Every password, every key, every certificate is tainted now and that’s a terrifying place for an organization to find itself. This hack should be used as the definitive lesson in why security matters and just how bad things can get if you don’t take it seriously.

Keep reading.

FBI Accuses North Korean Government in Cyberattack on Sony Pictures

I guess this is the authoritative determination, despite the extant doubts that Pyongyang is behind the hack.

At NYT, "Obama Vows U.S. Response to North Korea Cyberattack on Sony":

In describing the United States’ evidence against North Korea, the F.B.I. said that there were significant “similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks” to previous attacks by the North Koreans. It also said that there were classified elements of the evidence against the North that it could not reveal.

“The F.B.I. also observed significant overlap between the infrastructure used in this attack and other malicious cyberactivity the U.S. government has previously linked directly to North Korea,” the bureau said. “For example, the F.B.I. discovered that several Internet protocol addresses associated with known North Korean infrastructure communicated with I.P. addresses that were hard-coded into the data deletion malware used in this attack.”

The F.B.I. said that some of the methods employed in the Sony attack were similar to ones that were used by the North Koreans against South Korean banks and news media outlets in 2013.

“We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this attack on a private sector entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there,” the F.B.I. said.

It added: “Though the F.B.I. has seen a wide variety and increasing number of cyberintrusions, the destructive nature of this attack, coupled with its coercive nature, sets it apart. North Korea’s actions were intended to inflict significant harm on a U.S. business and suppress the right of American citizens to express themselves. Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior.”

The F.B.I.'s announcement was carefully coordinated with the White House and reflected the intensity of the investigation; just a week ago a senior F.B.I. official said he could not say whether North Korea was responsible. But it also puts new pressure on President Obama on how to respond. Administration officials note that the White House has now described the action against Sony as an “attack,” as opposed to mere theft of intellectual property, and that suggests that Mr. Obama is now looking for a government response, rather than a corporate one.

Also, at the FBI's homepage, "Update on Sony Investigation."

George Clooney on Hollywood's Epic Cowardice

Clooney's a leftist.

But he's at least got a pair. Jeez.

At Deadline, "Hollywood Cowardice: George Clooney Explains Why Sony Stood Alone In North Korean Cyberterror Attack":

DEADLINE: How could this have happened, that terrorists achieved their aim of cancelling a major studio film? We watched it unfold, but how many people realized that Sony legitimately was under attack?

GEORGE CLOONEY: A good portion of the press abdicated its real duty. They played the fiddle while Rome burned. There was a real story going on. With just a little bit of work, you could have found out that it wasn’t just probably North Korea; it was North Korea. The Guardians of Peace is a phrase that Nixon used when he visited China. When asked why he was helping South Korea, he said it was because we are the Guardians of Peace. Here, we’re talking about an actual country deciding what content we’re going to have. This affects not just movies, this affects every part of business that we have. That’s the truth. What happens if a newsroom decides to go with a story, and a country or an individual or corporation decides they don’t like it? Forget the hacking part of it. You have someone threaten to blow up buildings, and all of a sudden everybody has to bow down. Sony didn’t pull the movie because they were scared; they pulled the movie because all the theaters said they were not going to run it. And they said they were not going to run it because they talked to their lawyers and those lawyers said if somebody dies in one of these, then you’re going to be responsible.

We have a new paradigm, a new reality, and we’re going to have to come to real terms with it all the way down the line. This was a dumb comedy that was about to come out. With the First Amendment, you’re never protecting Jefferson; it’s usually protecting some guy who’s burning a flag or doing something stupid. This is a silly comedy, but the truth is, what it now says about us is a whole lot. We have a responsibility to stand up against this. That’s not just Sony, but all of us, including my good friends in the press who have the responsibility to be asking themselves: What was important? What was the important story to be covering here? The hacking is terrible because of the damage they did to all those people. Their medical records, that is a horrible thing, their Social Security numbers. Then, to turn around and threaten to blow people up and kill people, and just by that threat alone we change what we do for a living, that’s the actual definition of terrorism...

Keep reading. No one, not a single soul in Hollywood, would sign Clooney's petition in support of Sony. Cowards, the whole lot of them. Pathetic left-wing cowards, kowtowing to tyranny.

PHOTO CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons.

Obama Blames Sony After Failing to Defend Free Speech When it Mattered

Pathetic:

Classic. Barack Hussein blames #Sony for the cyber-attack. Just classic. Let's appease every freakin' U.S. enemy on earth. #NoKo #Hacking

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 19, 2014

#Sony "made a mistake"? No the idiot Democrat Party electorate made a mistake electing this modern-day Neville Chamberlin. #NoKo #Hacking

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 19, 2014

Obama: We'll respond to #NoKo cyber-attack by making Kim Jong- un Belgian waffles, or something. #Democrat #Appeasement #Hacking

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 19, 2014