The US is lobbing fresh sanctions against North Korea as a response to the cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment even as President Barack Obama's administration refuses to provide evidence of Pyongyang's involvement.
The latest sanctions [PDF] against North Korea's defense apparatus, its state-owned arms exporter, and 10 individuals are largely symbolic. The country is already deeply isolated from the world over its nuclear ambitions. Still, it's the first time the US has imposed sanctions against a nation to retaliate over the hack of an American company.
Pyongyang has denied involvement. On Sunday, it lashed out at the White House.
"The policy persistently pursued by the US to stifle the DPRK (North Korea), groundlessly stirring up bad blood towards it, would only harden its will and resolution to defend the sovereignty of the country," the country's state-run KCNA news agency quoted its foreign ministry spokesman as saying. "The persistent and unilateral action taken by the White House to slap 'sanctions' against the DPRK patently proves that it is still not away from inveterate repugnancy and hostility toward the DPRK."
The November 22 hack, by a group calling itself "Guardians of Peace," resulted in the release of terabytes of Sony data. On December 16, the group threatened potential terrorist attacks at movie theaters if they screened The Interview, a Sony comedy about an assassination plot on North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un. After the US declared Pyongyang's involvement in the hack, the movie debuted on Christmas to a limited theater release and was widely available for purchase online. It was among the top illegally torrented movies of the year.
Thousands of confidential Sony e-mails pilfered in the hack made their way onto the Internet, including communications about Hollywood's effort to bring Google's search engine to heel. Along the way, North Korea suffered a massive Internet failure, prompting Pyongyang to accuse the US of perpetrating the outage two weeks ago. North Korea hurled racial slurs that Obama was a "monkey in a tropical forest," acting recklessly.
Regarding the North Korea sanctions, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said "We take seriously North Korea's attack that aimed to create destructive financial effects on a US company and to threaten artists and other individuals with the goal of restricting their right to free expression."
The US is refusing, however, to unveil any evidence that North Korea was involved. The administration said that "independent experts don't have access to the same classified information as the FBI."
Some experts who have examined the incident and the malware used to erase Sony's hard drives have suggested that the Sony network was attacked internally, or it at least fell victim partially to an inside job.
The White House remained steadfast and said the sanctions were "the first aspect of our response." Whether that means criminal charges in a US courtroom would be brought is unclear. The US government isn't saying. Such a tactic, however, is not without precedent.
In May, five members of the Chinese military were indicted in a US court on accusations of hacking into major US corporations and stealing trade secrets. The companies, ranging from Alcoa to Westinghouse, were allegedly attacked by five members of the People's Liberation Army between 2006 and 2014. The stolen trade secrets are connected to everything from nuclear to renewable energy, according to the US indictment [PDF].
The US provided great detail about how an alleged, widespread "spearfishing" campaign by the Chinese got away with the American data. To date, the charges remain largely symbolic as none of the suspects have been brought to the US for trial.
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