Let's not Forget Sony

I happened to see the 60 Minutes story on Sony, rebroadcast from April, and noticed how far away it seemed to be.  [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-korea-cyberattack-on-sony-60-minutes/]  We need to be reminded that it was an Internet-eternity ago but not something we should forget.  In the Information War, it marked a different kind of event, a destructive attack that resulted in the disclosure of internal information that embarrassed individuals.  60 Minutes did a good job of explaining, in very simple terms, what happened to allow Sony to be hit.  Those techniques are being used every day and we are playing catch-up when we should be out front of this problem.

North Korea is a proxy for China in this attack, and it is a warning of things to come.  The Chinese have used North Korea as a way to agitate us, then watch to see what we do about it.  The North Korean leader says he is going to put up one of his Taepo Dong missiles and put a nuclear weapon on it.  He says it will reach the United States, and he intends to see if he can do that.  We didn't even flinch when he said it, because nobody believed he could do it.  Sony was different.

This Sony was a U.S. subsidiary of the Japanese Sony, so they were attacking a U.S. business, using a destructive attack, and embarrassing its leaders.  We don't want to miss the significance of that.  Nothing the U.S. has done so far has been a deterrent to China using a proxy to stick a finger in our eye.  China says, "It wasn't me.  Those North Koreans are so hard to control."  Not when you are the biggest supplier of food and energy [ http://www.cfr.org/china/china-north-korea-relationship/p11097 ] to this little country.  You can bet the North Koreans don't have a big Internet presence that doesn't go though Chinese circuits to get anywhere.  Who are they kidding?

When Xi and Obama sit down to discuss their future relations, one of the things they should be talking about is why we should believe that North Korea acts on its own when they do this kind of thing.  We all know they don't, so stop pretending.