NSA spying on North Korean Networks before Sony Attack

It seems that the one who have been accused of spying have themselves been spied on since a long time.

American officials had accused North Korea for the damaging cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in November. It now seems why the American officials had done so. It seems that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been keeping a close eye on North Korean intentions and has also broken into the computer systems of the country, according to a report by NYTimes. 

The American spy agency justifies this breaking in due to a growing concern about North Korea’s maturing capabilities. That is why the spy agency drilled into the Chinese networks that connect North Korea to the outside world, picked through connections in Malaysia as they are favored by the North Korean hackers and then penetrated directly into the North with the help of American allies such as South Korea. 

This task was undertaken in order to place malware that could basically track the internal workings of many of the computers and networks that are used by the North Korean hackers.

These North Korean hackers have been stated to be around 6000 in number by the South Korean military. These North Korean hackers are taken care and commanded by the country’s main intelligence service which is known as the Reconnaissance General Bureau and Bureau 121 which is the secretive hacking unit. This hacking unit has a large outpost in China and works from there. 

Moreover some officials have stated that the evidence that has been gathered by NSA under this operation was the driving force which basically persuaded the president of United States of America Barack Obama to blame the North Korean government of Kim Jong-un of conducting this cyber-attack on Sony.

Now this accusation by the President Obama has taken new turns as he promised retaliation against the hackers and this the Obama administration has started by implementing new economic sanctions on North Korea.  

Moreover James A. Lewis who is a cyber-warfare expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington stated that finding out from where attacks come from is very difficult and slow. However he explained that the speed by which the American authorities made their conclusion about North Korea seems as if they had some kind of inside information. 

Just recently the famous former security agency contractor Edward J. Snowden revealed documents which showed that the American government spends billions on the technology of surveillance and spying. 

However the main question that remains is that if the American authorities are so sure that the cyber-attack on Sony has been conducted by North Korea than why did not these authorities warn Sony about such an attack.

Moreover the North Korean government had warned early in June that the release of the new Sony movie ‘The Interview’ will be seen as an act of war. ‘The Interview’ is a crude comedy about a CIA plot to assassinate the Supreme leader of North Korea.