NEW YORK TIMES: The Obama administration doubled down on Friday on its allegation that North Korea’s leadership was behind the hacking of Sony Pictures, announcing new, if largely symbolic, economic sanctions against 10 senior North Korean officials and the intelligence agency it said was the source of “many of North Korea’s major cyberoperations.”…
The administration has said there would be a covert element of its response as well. Officials sidestepped questions about whether the United States was involved in bringing down North Korea’s Internet connectivity to the outside world over the past two weeks.
Perhaps the most noticeable element of the announcement was the administration’s effort to push back on the growing chorus of doubters about the evidence that the attack on Sony was North Korean in origin. Several cybersecurity firms have argued that when Mr. Obama took the unusual step of naming the North’s leadership — on Dec. 19 the president declared that “North Korea engaged in this attack” — he had been misled by American intelligence agencies that were too eager to blame a longtime adversary and allowed themselves to be duped by ingenious hackers skilled at hiding their tracks… (more)
