I know my tin foil hat is showing, but it's a creepy possibility nonetheless, and is in no way distant from Washington's past antics.
North Korea makes a nice target to blame.
I just don't know that Sony and the media industry carries so much weight that they can actually sway our government to make shit up. And, was a pleasant fiction even what they actually wanted? I guess George Clooney wanted it. And, I guess Sony wanted to be able to say, "See, it was a nation-state that did this terrible thing, not our horrendous security practices."
So, maybe it is this simple. And, others have mentioned reasonable theories about what the administration could get out of it being North Korea: Concessions from NK allies, the ability to ratchet up cybersecurity expenditures (as another arm of the military industrial complex), and redirection of attention from other issues. If the latter was the goal, it has certainly been effective. We're all talking about it, and many of us don't even believe them. So, it might not even matter if we believe the story, as long as we're not paying attention to whatever else they're up to.
I gotta get a new hat.
Or perhaps an individual in the FBI running the investigation wanted to project confidence to his superiors, and made a public statement. At which point the FBI felt that it could not backtrack and decided to double down on its confidence.
Or maybe there was a filing error where a low level secretary checked "North Korea, definite" instead of "Uncertain" on the paperwork, and the FBI is again doubling down on its original public claim.
Foreign policy shenanigans. They claim North Korea is attacking our economy, and the next time they have to sit down with the crazy fucks at a table with the Chinese and Russians, maybe they don't have to make as many concessions.
Doesn't matter if it's true or not, just that it was plausible.
If they already wanted to slap NK with more sanctions this gave them an easy way to do it.
Some high ranking US/FBI official: "Let's just say NK attacked us, no one can prove it, no one will listen to NK if they dispute it, AND it looks like a win for US/FBI out-hacking the hackers. After all can't we all agree NK is bad so what if we lie about this hack we are serving the GREATER GOOD by doing so..."
The thing is, I'm entirely willing to believe North Korea would like to have this kind of capability, and if they do have this kind of capability (which they might), I'm entirely willing to believe that they would use it broadly and aggressively. North Korea is led by angry, crazy, people. But, the early communication about the attack does not match that of a nation state, and there's no reason for them to have tried to pretend to be a random blackmail organization that I can imagine.
In short, an IP is not a smoking gun. I worry that the FBI is taking advantage of people's lack of understanding of technology in order to push a story that is politically convenient, but factually shaky. I mean, I hope they aren't intentionally misleading people, I just don't necessarily trust that they wouldn't if there were motivation to do otherwise.