As far as consequences that actually happened -- Do you mean to say that theaters that showed the film were bombed? Or are you referring to embarassing email leaks which would have no doubt been released anyway?

Second, if you need to set up a fall guy, then implicating a nation state as historically secretive, aggressive, and isolated as the North Koreans is actually a pretty good idea.

"Do something bad and blame the weird kid" isn't a new idea.

I don't know who did it, but both arguments seem plausible.

Also now after Snowden everything the USG does is to be doubted (I'm guessing since his revelations affect the internet and this is the first issue that has directly affected people on HN), and now everything they do can somehow be traced back to trying to suppress, hamper, weaken and spy on you via internet.

Watching the theories that somehow we'd try to use N Korea who have zero value economic value to the USA, or actually posing a threat as some kind of scapegoat to hinder online speech is more entertaining than anything else.

That's where political discussions inevitably and invariably end up. Probably best to just flag these articles.

How can the US claim to be a republic when it doesn't even bother to justify its actions to its people and their representatives?

This is an oft-repeated claim that is sorely in need of justification. Especially in this case, where the attack is purely digital.

My wife worked in Navy intelligence for six years. She was privy to classified information. She, at times, knew where information was coming from, and it is obvious that the information itself would have implicated its source if it were to be released.

I'm not saying that's the case here. I'm pretty damn skeptical of my government as well. That said, the Fed is under no obligation to reveal all of the information it has. I think we'll be in the dark on this one for some time unless things change in such a way that would require more information to be released.

I strongly dislike this paternalistic approach, and I'm rather tired of the people being treated like children. We know things are complicated. We know geopolitics are more complex than "USA good, NK bad" or vice versa. They could say a lot more than they are saying without compromising their intelligence gathering capabilities.

If the US government wants support and trust, it needs to earn it from every new generation of citizens. If it doesn't care about support and trust, it has overstepped its bounds as a representative government and should be reeled in.

The correct response to "who was responsible for this" is "who cares". The FBI seems to think it matters, so people are refuting their evidence. And are reasons for that.

The government has no credibility in this area. Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction. This has the same ring to it. They have a lot of the same incentives. It doesn't even matter whether they're intentionally misleading us or just incompetent, the solution in either case is to disregard whatever they say.

And they can't actually tell where the attack came from. That's not how it works -- especially if the attacker is trying to disguise their true location as they have every incentive to do. Computers in North Korea are not immune from the myriad Java and Flash vulnerabilities, and once you pop one machine you can put ssh on a VM and stage your attack from it. Distinguishing that from the attacker being physically in the same room as that machine is not going to happen based on an analysis of network traffic or anything to do with IP addresses. Anyone who claims otherwise could be malicious or just wrong, but it's at least one of those.

None of that proves it wasn't North Korea. The point is that it doesn't matter. What are you going to do differently if it was, as opposed to being some troll in Florida? The only sensible things to do are the same in either case. Stop using ridiculously bad passwords, etc. What changes if it was North Korea? Are we going to invade? Should we give the FBI new powers of cyber warfare? That's what people are afraid of, because those are profoundly stupid ideas.

(Not buying "sources and methods" as a reason for failure to disclose in this case -- I may not know what IP addresses are conclusively tied to North Korea, but the North Koreans themselves certainly do, and they must assume that the NSA does as well. Particularly if, as Comey claims, the use of those addresses "unshielded" was an error that they immediately recognized as such, and rectified post haste.)

Everyone knew that North Korea had it out for Sony, what's to stop a network security enthusiast from stirring the pot by performing the attack and planting "evidence" that it was coming from North Korea. I don't think it's far fetched to think that many young security enthusiasts would get excited to think about causing such a stir.

I don't recall Occam's razor ever applying to politics.