>the explicit North Korean connection -- threats about the movie The Interview -- were only made by the hackers after the media picked up on the possible links between the film release and the cyberattack
I personally think this is a misinterpretation of what happened. Media began heavily speculating it was tied to The Interview about 1-2 days after the hack was initially reported, but the hackers waited until Dec. 15 before explicitly mentioning it. If they wanted to take advantage of the sensationalism, why continue releasing messages and threats that clearly acknowledge Sony and the media between Nov. 24 and Dec. 15 while not mentioning The Interview until the most likely motive essentially became obvious?
Second, I think the group name "Guardians of Peace" is a fairly obvious allusion to "guarding international peace by preventing Sony from releasing The Interview", and is in line with just about everything they've been saying. And of course they were using that group name on day 1.
I'm not saying North Korea necessarily did it, but I think the actors either intended to stop the movie from the beginning, or intentionally framed North Korea by using a pretext of trying to stop the movie. I don't think they're a group of hacktivists who only appropriated The Interview as a motive after media speculation.
>I think the group name "Guardians of Peace" is a fairly obvious allusion to "guarding international peace by preventing Sony from releasing The Interview", and is in line with just about everything they've been saying.
There's nothing obvious to me at all in that name referring to the things we later learned. It's a really generically vague name, so it's easy to project onto it.
I personally think this is a misinterpretation of what happened. Media began heavily speculating it was tied to The Interview about 1-2 days after the hack was initially reported, but the hackers waited until Dec. 15 before explicitly mentioning it. If they wanted to take advantage of the sensationalism, why continue releasing messages and threats that clearly acknowledge Sony and the media between Nov. 24 and Dec. 15 while not mentioning The Interview until the most likely motive essentially became obvious?
Second, I think the group name "Guardians of Peace" is a fairly obvious allusion to "guarding international peace by preventing Sony from releasing The Interview", and is in line with just about everything they've been saying. And of course they were using that group name on day 1.
I'm not saying North Korea necessarily did it, but I think the actors either intended to stop the movie from the beginning, or intentionally framed North Korea by using a pretext of trying to stop the movie. I don't think they're a group of hacktivists who only appropriated The Interview as a motive after media speculation.