U.S. to Name North Korea as Sony Hackers
CAMEROTA: The U.S. government getting set to blame North Korea for the crippling hack of Sony. But not everyone thinks this was the handiwork of North Korea. Who else could be behind it? Let's bring in Bobby Ghosh. She's our CNN global affairs analyst and managing editor of "Quartz". And Martin Williams, he's the senior correspondent and former Tokyo bureau chief of IDG News Service, also the founder of NorthKoreatech.org, that's a blog that covers technology developments in the secretive state. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being here. Martin, you are not convinced that North Korea was behind this. Why not?</s>MARTIN WILLIAMS, NORTHKOREATECH.ORG: Well, I'm not convinced with any of the evidence that we've seen so far. This doesn't look like a typical North Korean hack. The country in the past has gone in and attacked things and hasn't been as noisy, there haven't been any of these public statements that we've seen this time. Also, if we look at what happened in this hack, the hackers at the beginning didn't say anything about this movie. So, certainly based on everything we know so far, I don't think we have enough evidence to really conclude that North Korea is behind it.</s>CAMEROTA: So, Martin, in other words, the Web site that this shadowy anonymous group set up talking about the threats against this movie and what they would do and 9/11-style attack, you don't think that has the fingerprints of North Korea?</s>WILLIAMS: I mean, it could do. It could be a group that is linked with North Korea or somehow aided by the country. But if this is North Korea, this really is nothing like we've seen before. So, it really does sort of raise a frightening new level in these kind of cyberattacks that we've seen take place in the last few years.</s>CAMEROTA: Bobby, what do you think of this not having the hallmarks of a typical North Korean attack?</s>BOBBY GHOSH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, the thing that Martin said is -- the crucial phrase was: as far as we know. And we know so little and so little information has been given out. What we do know is so far, there was no attempt at blackmail, which suggests this is political in some way.</s>CAMEROTA: What do you mean, there's no attempt at blackmail? They didn't want the movie release and they said there'd be an attack if it weren't?</s>GHOSH: What I read was that the attackers didn't ask Sony for money in exchange for sort of removing the malware or giving them the tools to block it, which sometimes happens. North Korean state agency has said that this attack was done by sympathizers, which sometimes is code for we did it. The fact that they picked Sony, the background of the movie, it's a Japanese company, North Korea, has a longstanding animus with Japan, that's also indicative. And now, the Obama administration is about to announce we understand today, that they're going to finger North Korea directly. They say that they've picked up digital fingerprints. We haven't seen it, Martin and I, so it's a little hard to know for sure. But there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that does point to North Korea.</s>CAMEROTA: Martin, we had a White House -- a former White House official on a few minutes ago who said that she believes that they do have evidence that it's North Korea. She said they must have the signals intelligence intercepts with regional officials and human intelligence pointing to North Korea. What do you say to that level of evidence?</s>WILLIAMS: I think the key thing we're going to see today is the exact language used by the White House or whatever part of the government announces this. There's a big difference between North Korea attacking Sony and attackers using North Korean software. It's going to be really important to see what level of certainty the U.S. government has that North Korea is involved in and quite what it thinks its involvement is.</s>CAMEROTA: Martin, I want to stick with you for the technology of this. Help us understand the amount of data that was stolen from Sony, we understand is ten times that of which is in the library of Congress. Are there no triggers, no red flags that go off in a company when that amount of data is being siphoned out of their computer systems?</s>WILLIAMS: If that claim is true, then there should be, obviously. So far, the hackers have released online several dozens of gigabytes of information, they're talking about 100 times that. So that's what they say they've got. We haven't seen evidence of that. Hackers are prone to over-estimating, over-stating what they've done. But it looks like Sony's security was lacking in this one. These guys should never have been able to get away with this type of information and all of the confidential stuff they got off the networks, the emails, the movies, the financial reports. This is really very damaging for Sony.</s>CAMEROTA: Bobby, does it suggest that there must have been somebody on the inside at Sony who was helping?</s>GHOSH: Well, it would appear again, the hackers were able to get access to one system administrator's password within Sony. That doesn't mean that the system administrator gave it to them, they could have stolen it. That sort ever thing has happened before. It's not conclusive one way or the other. Again, hopefully, we'll get more clarity when the Obama administration or the FBI makes their statement today. The one thing that's is ambiguous, is that this is a company that had very poor security protocols. I mean, even the information that was released by the hackers, the passwords they were using was "password" in some cases. This is a company that needed a complete overhaul of its security protocols, it's a cautionary tale for all companies across America and around the world, that this kind of -- there are people out there, whether they've North Koreans, people out there who have the tools to break into major corporate systems and that means every company has to be on guard.</s>CAMEROTA: And by design, Sony said they didn't want to beef it up because they thought it would be too expensive. Martin, last, you study this for a living. You study what North Korea is doing. What do you think North Korea wants? What is next that we should be prepared for?</s>WILLIAMS: I think we need to keep looking at the development of North Korea's cyber infrastructure and these teams of hackers they have, the Unit 121, which is the team that's been talked about in relation to this attack is one of several that the country has. One of the reasons we haven't seen much in the last few years is because a lot of the attacks have been on South Korea. So, it hasn't made news in the United States, or in the rest of the world. But if they're starting to turn their attention to outside of the Asian -- outside of the Korean peninsula, and especially if they're starting to target companies rather than governments, this needs to be kept a close eye on.</s>CAMEROTA: Martin Williams and Bobby Ghosh, thanks so much for all that information. Great to see you. Let's go over to Chris.</s>CUOMO: All right, Alisyn, the price of oil is down, the price of gas is down, the Dow is up, all good, right? Well, maybe not. We'll explain why too much of a good thing can turn out to be bad. Stay with us.