patches70 wrote:Wired magazine did an article just the other day explaining why NK most likely wasn't behind the attack. You can find it easily enough if you wished to look. I guess you don't think that there are lots of other possible culprits besides NK? Are you daft?
No, I was referring to the part about how NK isn't near the top of the list. That means you believe that there are many people or groups out there who are interested in hacking Sony, but also that they have a substantially better reason to target Sony in particular than any other major corporation. That is a statement that requires evidence. We have a particular a priori reason to believe that NK has a better motive to attack Sony in particular than random hacktivists have to attack Sony, compared to other large corporations. That doesn't mean NK did it, but it does mean that if you're going to claim that other groups have a stronger motive than NK, you have to back that claim up.
All the articles blaming NK always cite "anonymous sources" where as Wired goes in depth and looks at the actual evidence of the attack to come to their conclusion and explain exactly why they don't think it was NK. The "evidence" that it was NK is so flimsy it's not even funny. But you won't know that unless you go to sources that actually know about this sort of stuff, or you can get your news from the NYT who cite anonymous sources as proof if you like.
Wired didn't do any major digging, they just repeated what the publicly available evidence was (at the time of publication) and simply took the stance that it wasn't enough to blame the North Koreans.
There were two particular lines in the malicious code of the hack that the US government would say "this proves it's NK", except Wired explains how that's bullshit because apparently hackers like to throw in false information. Granted, I don't know much about hacking, but I would imagine Wired knows a bit more about the subject than Mets, or the NYT.
That is precisely why you should be taking the government's claim seriously. Anyone who is familiar with very basic details of programming knows that the evidence published the government (on its face) is not enough to target any one group in particular. If the FBI has published what they said and still been able to conclusively link the attack to NK, that means they must have confidential information that they can't release, which proves it. It is the very weakness of the public claim that means you can't just discard the possibility. Of course, they could be lying, but if you claim that because the publicly released evidence doesn't add up, and therefore that the FBI is lying about it or being tricked, I think you're discarding a very real possibility that they know something we don't.
For my part, I have to take into consideration that the US government lies, and as far as I know Wired has never lied to me. I can't say the same about the USG or the NYT.
You wouldn't know if Wired ever lied to you, because by your own admission you don't know anything about the subject. You are saying that the NY Times is considered by you to be suspect, while simultaneously you don't think that Wired could have its own motive here. The problem is that the pendulum is swinging too far the other way. Your default stance is that the USG is probably being untruthful, which means that you psychologically give too much credit to those who take a stance that opposes what the USG says. Maybe this will often be the right decision, but you have to be aware of it.
