For the United States, it’s official. North Korea is responsible for the cyber attack on Sony. Period.

As usual, the government expects you to take its word on faith and refuses to provide evidence. The FBI says it used “sensitive sources and methods” to pin the blame on North Korea, but refuses to name its sources and the methods it used.

North Korea Too Underpowered an Inept to Launch Sophisticated Cyber Attack

The FBI’s conclusion is questioned by security and computer networking experts. They say North Korea does not have the ability to launch this sort of attack.

David Kennedy, founder of the security consulting firm TrustedSec LLC, said North Korea “is still very shut off and secretive, so it struggles with getting the technology it needs to launch major cyberattacks.”

On Saturday, an FBI-connected cyber security expert tweeted out his opinion that North Korea is simply not capable of the Sony attack.

As a guy that works with the FBI on cyber crime fairly often, I still can’t help but feel like they got this wrong. NK lacks this ability.

— Christopher M Davis (@DavisSec) December 19, 2014

Others argue that the sheer weight of the data stolen would have crippled North Korea’s fledgling ISP.

“Look at the bandwidth going into North Korea. I mean, the pipelines, the pipes going in, handling data, they only have one major ISP across their entire nation. That kind of information flowing at one time would have shut down North Korean Internet completely,” Hector Monsegur told CBS. (Monsegur, aka Sabu, is the supposed Anonymous hacker who served as a stool pigeon for the government.)

“For something like this to happen, it had to happen over a long period of time. You cannot just exfiltrate one terabyte or 100 terabytes of data in a matter of weeks,” Monsegur said. “It’s not possible. It would have taken months, maybe even years, to exfiltrate something like 100 terabytes of data without anyone noticing.”

There is only one “omnivore of staggering capabilities” able to suck up this much data in short order — the National Security Agency. According to NSA whistleblower William Binney, the agency’s computers in Utah can suck up 20 terabytes – the equivalent of the Library of Congress – per minute.

In addition to a lack of technology, North Korea is not especially adept when it comes to cyber attacks.

In March, 2013 SophosLabs identified malware used in an internet attack that disrupted banking and television network systems in South Korea. Dubbed DarkSeoul, the malware was “not particularly sophisticated,” according to Graham Cluley, writing for Sophos’ Naked Security.

NSA: Top Innovator of Malware

While the government and the corporate media were pointing fingers at under-powered and, as DarkSeoul reveals, pathetically inept North Korea, it failed to report on a story about the real innovator of malicious software, the NSA and its partner GCHQ, or Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s signals intelligence organization.

The story concerns Regin, described by Symantec as “a complex piece of malware whose structure displays a degree of technical competence rarely seen. Customizable with an extensive range of capabilities depending on the target, it provides its controllers with a powerful framework for mass surveillance and has been used in spying operations against government organizations, infrastructure operators, businesses, researchers and private individuals.”

Further research into Edward Snowden’s revelation that the NSA and GCHQ were involved in hacking attacks on Belgacom, a Belgian phone and internet services provider, and on EU computer systems, discovered the use of the sophisticated Regin malware.

“Is North Korea responsible for the Sony breach? I can’t imagine a more unlikely scenario than that one,” writes Jeffrey Carr, founder and CEO of Seattle cybersecurity consulting firm Taia Global.”

“My advice to journalists, business executives, policymakers, and the general public is to challenge everything that you hear or read about the attribution of cyber attacks. Demand to see the evidence, not scrubbed ‘indicators of compromise’ that can’t be validated.”

Because the corporate media operates as a propaganda conduit for the U.S. government and its national security apparatus, all such warnings will be ignored as blame is turned on North Korea.

China to be Blamed for Sony Hack

Following the FBI allegation, Obama promised “proportional” retaliation “at a time and place” of U.S. government choosing.

That retaliation, although unspecified, may include action against China, the real object of concern for the elite. North Korea poses absolutely no threat while China is a primary geostrategic obstacle.

Obama left unstated for now the connection between North Korea and China.

“Amid speculation that China, which patronizes the maverick North Korean regime, may also be connected to the events, Obama said the US had no indication North Korea was acting in conjunction with another country,” the Times of India reported on Saturday.

And while Obama dealt in ambiguity and generalization, unnamed officials in the government were not as reluctant.

“China may have helped North Korea carry out the hacking attack on Sony Pictures, a US official has told Reuters,” The Telegraph reported on Friday.

“The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the conclusion of the US investigation was to be announced later by federal authorities.”

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