--- title: Sony Hack and North Korea: Secrecy Should Take a Back Seat description: American history is littered with examples of classified information pointing us towards aggression against other countries—think WMDs—only to later learn that the evidence was wrong canonical: https://time.com/3653625/sony-hack-obama-sanctions-north-korea/ author: Bruce Schneier article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-05T16:17:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-31T08:06:57.081Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why Secrecy Should Take a Back Seat in Our Intelligence on the Sony Hack og:description: American history is littered with examples of classified information pointing us towards aggression against other countries—think WMDs—only to later learn that the evidence was wrong og:url: https://time.com/3653625/sony-hack-obama-sanctions-north-korea/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt36835373168768fd/6987781635ba6f8092c064c1/460699752.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3646 og:image:height: 2051 og:image:alt: President Obama Holds News Conference At The White House og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Secrecy Should Take a Back Seat in Our Intelligence on the Sony Hack twitter:description: American history is littered with examples of classified information pointing us towards aggression against other countries—think WMDs—only to later learn that the evidence was wrong twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt36835373168768fd/6987781635ba6f8092c064c1/460699752.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Government Must Show Us the Evidence That North Korea Attacked Sony > Sponsored content. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. by [Bruce Schneier](https://time.com/author/bruce-schneier/) ## Bruce Schneier Jan 5, 2015 4:17 PM UTC  President Barack Obama holds a press conference during which he discussed Sony Pictures' decision not to release "The Interview" in wake of the alleged North Korean hacking scandal at The White House on December 19, 2014 in Washington, DC. President Barack Obama holds a press conference during which he discussed Sony Pictures' decision not to release "The Interview" in wake of the alleged North Korean hacking scandal at The White House on December 19, 2014 in Washington, DC.Leigh Vogel—WireImage by [Bruce Schneier](https://time.com/author/bruce-schneier/) ## Bruce Schneier Jan 5, 2015 4:17 PM UTC When you’re attacked by a missile, you can follow its trajectory back to where it was launched from. When you’re attacked in cyberspace, figuring out who did it is much harder. The reality of international aggression in cyberspace will change how we approach defense. Many of us in the computer-security field are skeptical of the U.S. government’s claim that it has positively identified North Korea as the perpetrator of the [massive Sony hack](https://www.riskbasedsecurity.com/2014/12/a-breakdown-and-analysis-of-the-december-2014-sony-hack/) in November 2014\. The FBI’s [evidence](http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/update-on-sony-investigation) is [circumstantial](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/did-north-korea-really-attack-sony/383973/) and [not very](http://marcrogers.org/2014/12/21/why-i-still-dont-think-its-likely-that-north-korea-hacked-sony/) [convincing](http://www.wired.com/2014/12/evidence-of-north-korea-hack-is-thin/). The attackers never mentioned the movie that became the centerpiece of the hack until the press did. More likely, the culprits are random hackers who have [loved to hate](http://gizmodo.com/why-sony-keeps-getting-hacked-1667259233) Sony for over a decade, or possibly a disgruntled [insider](http://blog.norsecorp.com/2014/12/29/ex-employee-five-others-fingered-in-sony-hack/). On the other hand, most people believe that the FBI would not sound so sure unless it was convinced. And President Obama would not have [imposed sanctions](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30661973) against North Korea if he weren’t convinced. This implies that there’s [classified evidence](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/02/u-s-spies-say-they-tracked-sony-hackers-for-years.html) as well. A couple of weeks ago, I [wrote](https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2014/12/did%5Fnorth%5Fkorea%5Freal.html) for the _Atlantic_, “The NSA has been trying to eavesdrop on North Korea’s government communications since the Korean War, and it’s reasonable to assume that its analysts are in pretty deep. The agency might have intelligence on the planning process for the hack. It might, say, have phone calls discussing the project, weekly PowerPoint status reports, or even Kim Jong Un’s sign-off on the plan. On the other hand, maybe not. I could have written the same thing about Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of that country, and we all know how wrong the government was about that.” The NSA is extremely reluctant to reveal its intelligence capabilities — or what it refers to as “sources and methods” — against North Korea simply to convince all of us of its conclusion, because by revealing them, it tips North Korea off to its insecurities. At the same time, we rightly have reason to be skeptical of the government’s unequivocal attribution of the attack without seeing the evidence. Iraq’s mythical weapons of mass destruction is only the most recent example of a major intelligence failure. American history is littered with examples of claimed secret intelligence pointing us toward aggression against other countries, only for us to learn later that the evidence was wrong. Cyberspace exacerbates this in two ways. First, it is very [difficult](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2014.977382) to attribute attacks in cyberspace. Packets don’t come with return addresses, and you can never be sure that what you think is the originating computer hasn’t itself been hacked. Even worse, it’s hard to tell the difference between attacks carried out by a couple of lone hackers and ones where a nation-state military is responsible. When we do know who did it, it’s usually because a lone hacker admitted it or because there was a months-long forensic investigation. Second, in cyberspace, it is much [easier](http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2348532/bruce-schneier-web-attackers-are-trouncing-defenders) to attack than to defend. The primary defense we have against military attacks in cyberspace is counterattack and the threat of counterattack that leads to deterrence. What this all means is that it’s in the U.S.’s best interest to claim omniscient powers of attribution. More than anything else, those in charge want to signal to other countries that they cannot get away with attacking the U.S.: If they try something, we will know. And we will retaliate, swiftly and effectively. This is also why the U.S. has been [cagey](http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sony-hack/reporters-press-state-department-north-korea-internet-outage-n273841) about whether it caused North Korea’s [Internet outage](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/22/us-sony-cybersecurity-northkorea-idUSKBN0K01WA20141222) in late December. It can be an effective bluff, but only if you get away with it. Otherwise, you lose credibility. The FBI is already starting to equivocate, [saying](http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/fbi-briefed-on-alternate-sony-hack-theory-113866.html#ixzz3NNqVAu7c) others might have been involved in the attack, possibly [hired](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/30/us-northkorea-cyberattack-idUSKBN0K71FK20141230) by North Korea. If the real attackers surface and can demonstrate that they acted independently, it will be obvious that the FBI and NSA were overconfident in their attribution. Already, the FBI has lost [significant](http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/12/the-consequences-of-credible-doubt-about-the-usg-attribution-in-the-sony-hack/) [credibility](http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/12/obama-gambled-lost-us-credibility-on-cyber-claims.html). The only way out of this, with respect to the Sony hack and any other incident of cyber-aggression in which we’re expected to support retaliatory action, is for the government to be much more forthcoming about its evidence. The secrecy of the NSA’s sources and methods is going to have to take a backseat to the public’s right to know. And in cyberspace, we’re going to have to accept the uncomfortable fact that there’s a lot we don’t know. _Bruce Schneier is a security technologist, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and the CTO of Co3 Systems Inc. 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