An NSA operation that penetrated North Korea's computer network four years before last year's hack attack on Sony convinced President Barack Obama that the communist country perpetrated the devastating attack,
The New York Times reports.
Citing information from former officials of the U.S. and elsewhere, as well as computer experts and an NSA document, the Times says the operation began in 2010.
It grew into a major effort to insert malware into North Korea's network to track the thousand of hackers in North Korea, many of whom work for North Korea's intelligence service, the Times says.
Obama publicly accused the North Korean government of Kim Jong-un soon after the major computer attack on Sony in November because of evidence gathered by the secret operation, the Times says.
"Attributing where attacks come from is incredibly difficult and slow, cyberwarfare expert James A. Lewis told the Times. "The speed and certainty with which the United States made its determinations about North Korea told you that something was different here — that they had some kind of inside view."
The United States has been implanting "beacons" able to map computer networks and surveillance software for about a decade, the Times reports.
Because of the extensive knowledge of North Korea's hacking system, the Times questioned why the U.S. government was not able to give Sony Pictures a heads up that North Korea was gaining access to its computers when they first began "spear fishing" attacks in September. After all, North Korea already had publicly declared that the vulgar comedy "The Interview," which was about the assassination of Kim Jong-un, was an "act of war."
The attacks did not look unusual to anyone at the time, though, and it was not determined until after the attacks that the hackers had likely gained the credentials of a Sony systems administrator.
Many tech experts have said they don't believe North Korea was behind the attacks – or at least did not act alone – because of the sophistication of the attack.
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