[higherpurpose]

And another thing from Spiegel's article. NSA routinely attacks targets and then makes it look as if someone else did it:

> But the loot isn't delivered directly to ROC's IP address. Rather, it is routed to a so-called Scapegoat Target. That means that stolen information could end up on someone else's servers, making it look as though they were the perpetrators.

So how do we really know it was North Korea, and not just NSA planting that evidence that NK hacked Sony in those two months? I mean other than "trusting NSA"?

[xnull1guest]

We can't really know. There is no way to be perfectly certain.

That said one can apply an Occam's calculus using whatever information and reasoning you do trust. I personally trust that, whomever the #GOP was, they were motivated by SONY's role in developing "the movie of terrorism". This seems to me to be consistent with what the group published and with their 'Christmas surprise' showing collaboration between the State Department and SONY on the development of the movie related to its diplomatic value - something I don't think the NSA or allies would do. So I think the group had NK sympathies in mind. Granted, this doesn't rule out attribution to other states or hacktivists who hold these sympathies.

[anonbanker]

This post is another example of a trend in this thread to down vote the on-topic posts. Am I the only one that noticed that the highest voted comment in this thread is about Clapper splitting the bill? Why aren't we discussing the rest of the article?