US Vows Retaliation Against North Korea Over Sony Hack

Officials Refuse to Say What Form Retaliation Will Take

The FBI is now claiming it has secret “proof” of North Korean culpability in the Sony Pictures hack. They offered no specifics, beyond hard-coded IP addresses in malicious code, but claimed the decisive proof was “classified.”

The hard-coded IP addresses are hardly conclusive, of course, as malware code is quite often copied wholesale by others when it’s found to have successfully done something, so all it really shows is that the code has some common origins.

Obama Administration officials vowed some form of retaliation against North Korea, though they have so far refused to say what that would be. President Obama declined questions on whether military action was being considered.

Obama did criticize Sony, however, for refusing to release “The Interview,” the movie which North Korea found objectionable. The movie’s full release had been scheduled for Christmas, but now Sony is saying they have “no plans” for any release at all.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.