Did North Korea Attack Sony Pictures?

After almost a week of downtime, Sony Pictures has finally restored most of the valuable systems at the studio, getting back to work. The hackers, who are still going under the ominous title #GOP, leaked out all of the information on Sony’s private network, including visa, passwords, business details and upcoming films.

In a joint investigation between the FBI and FireEye, early progress has lead to finding one of the largest malware bugs, capable of taking over hard-drives and enabling a boot for all of the computer system. The same malware bug took down Sony Pictures. The FBI has already sent an email to U.S. companies to make sure they’re safe from the malware attack, which could effectively destroy a complete computer system.

Back at Sony Pictures, several executives think North Korea was behind the attack. The country said there would be consequences for the U.S. for allowing The Interview, a new movie featuring the assassination of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un. In a statement, North Korea could not deny involvement of the attack, but did not confirm it either. It seems likely a state organized attack happened to Sony Pictures, and this may have large repercussions on North Korea.

Already, North Korea has various sanctions imposed due to human rights violations. The active government has allowed their peoples to starve to death and has maintained limited contact with the outside world, making it seem like all is good inside North Korea. The new attacks on the West show at least some competence by the governmental unit involved in cyber attacks. Either that or North Korea hired a powerful cyber unit from another country to attack Sony Pictures.

The malware that hit Sony Pictures was encoded in Korean, further adding suspicion to North Korea being behind the attack.