It is a big deal actually. Sony and these movie theaters taught the world that US businesses are so risk averse that they will give into any threat - credible or not. The crazies will now come out of the woodwork. Not every business will give in, but the volume of threats and the disruption they cause will vastly increase.
A foreign dictator just told the US population that it isn't allowed to see a movie he doesn't like (false flag conspiracy theories aside - sometimes things are exactly what they appear to be). I am not sure how anyone can think this isn't a big deal worthy of presidential intervention.
Yep, it sure is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment
"Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (SPE) is the American entertainment subsidiary of Japanese multinational technology and media conglomerate Sony."
That's brilliant. (I assume this refers to defacement s/kiddies)
Wars vs more script kiddies and you'd really choose the wars? I'm disgusted.
He asked you if you prefer war over script kiddies, and said he's disgusted that you seem to. I agree.
Do you or don't you prefer actual war (including torture, rape, cluster bombs, starvation, etc) over "cyber warfare" (including script kiddies, copyright violation, web site graffiti and defacement, leaked email and photos, cyber bullying, doxing, inappropriate use of apostrophes, etc)?
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/19/senior-cia-off...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfreda_Frances_Bikowsky
So how is what Alfreda Bikowsky did and was doxed for not as bad as anything script kiddies have ever done?
Leaving an ever accumlating pile of embarassing communications for someone to steal and then extort you for is not a national security weakness.
Add that a narrative around this story is that the hackers "spear phished" an IT admin. This is incredibly difficult to defend against for any organization (seriously -- for all of the browbeating against Sony on here -- it's all so simple -- I would argue that there are zero organizations that would withstand a concerted, targeted attack. Most would fall in a day). Not only did they purportedly co-opt a privileged account, they then sat on it for months.
Over months they could have changed policies, retrieved backups, and on and on.
When blaming Sony, everyone needs to remember that Snowden, a Dell contractor working at the NSA with limited access, took the King's Ransom from what is assumed to be the pinnacle of computer security and awareness.
So what if North Korea did it (of course I'm skeptical of this, anyone with a computer can conduct the same activities, with the motivator of trolling the entire world for fun). It's not a big deal, it's not something that requires US presidential intervention. It's not even remotely as big of a deal as the CIA torture report that just came out. The CIA report threatens our legitimacy as a world power. The Sony hack just costs a corporation some money, maybe (free publicity FTW). Big. Deal.
If this is the worst a hacker can do, I'd love to see all future wars replaced with hacking. I'll take that over agent orange and torture any day.
This sad, sick notion that hackers are terrorist enemy #1 and this is the most important thing governments should be working on is, like this movie will probably be, shitty fiction, a self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuated by Hollywood in movies like War Games that make it look like we're all going to be nuked thousands of times if we don't stop the Hacker menace. Help me change the media's perception of hacking before we start throwing more whistleblowers and e-graffiti artists in prison.
TLDR: Sony got hacked, too bad, learn a lesson and fix your computer security, let's not start WW3 over it shall we?