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U.S. Walks Tightrope with China in NKorea Cyber War
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
December 26, 2014
All Rights Reserved.
White House officials walk a tightrope accusing North
Korea of cyber-attacking Sony Pictures to prevent to release of “The Interview,”
a parody starring comedians Seth Rogan and James Franco attempting to
assassinate 31-year-old North Korean President Kim Jong-un. Given Internet access from China, U.S. officials know that North Korea’s cyber-warfare
with the U.S. couldn’t happen without China’s technology. Enduring U.S. complaints for years
for pirating computer software patents and copyrights, China has limited
patience while the U.S. accuses its communist neighbor of wreaking havoc on Sony
Pictures. Elected officials in the
U.S. don’t get heavy-handed repression of free speech in communist regimes,
whose power-base is related suppressing a free press, preventing the public from
knowing the government’s business, including how they crackdown on civil rights.
Chinese, Russian and North Korean leaders see a movie like “The
Interview” as so blasphemous, so disrespectful, so distasteful, they have no
problem persecuting the artists or studio responsible for the product. When 54-year-old Sony Pictures
Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton halted the release of "The Interview” Dec. 17,
it stirred outrage, especially with one former University of Chicago law
professor, President Barack Obama.
Obama flat-out chastised Sony for “making a mistake,” despite Lynton insisting
that movie chain operators wouldn’t risk showing the movie because of threats
from North Korea. Obama correctly
recognized the importance of not kowtowing to petty dictators threatening
reprisals against artistic works.
Whether Lyton used North Korea’s threats as a publicity stunt to hype the movie
is anyone’s guess. Lynton revered
course, releasing the film Dec. 24.
After leaving for his annual Christmas vacation in Hawaii Dec. 19, Obama
emphatically rejected calls on Capitol Hill led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
for more aggressive action. McCain
called North Korea’s hack of Sony Pictures an act of cyber-warfare or terrorism. Obama responded Dec. 21, calling
North Korea’s act “cyber vandalism,” trying to allay calls for retaliation. When North Korea’s Internet went
down Dec. 22, conservatives in Congress acknowledged that the White House
responded, though refusing to say what caused North Korea’s Internet problems. “North Korea’s cyber capacity relies
on Chinese support in terms of both hardware and software,” said Willy Lam, a
politics expert at Hong Kong-based Chinese University. Lam believes that if China wanted to
they could cut off the North Korean Internet, though he doubted they’d go that
far.
China’s reluctance to intervene stems not from their technical know-how
but their alignment with North Korea’s communist state. “They want to maintain that position
[of control], so they won’t pull their support because of the hacking scandal,”
said Lam, accepting fully that North Korea did, indeed, pull off the hacking
scandal. While Pyongyang denied any
involvement in hacking Sony’s computers, some computer experts believe they
received China’s help. “The
capacity of the Internet connection in North Korea is very poor, given the
number of IP addresses in the country,” Masahiko Imura, spokesman of Tokyo-based
cyber security company LAC” told the AFP.
Cyber security experts believe North Korea has up to 6,000 hackers,
according to Lim Jong-in, a cyber security expert South Korea’s University
Center of Information Security Technologies.
Calling North Korea “one of the world’s top give countries” in cyber
warfare capability, Lin Jong-in believes North Korea has the technology
necessary to hack Sony Pictures computer systems. He suggests that China Unicom has a
trail of hacking that goes through Chinese territory where North Korean hackers
operate to avoid detection. South
Korean authorities traced the hacking to IP addresses in the Chinese city of
Shenyang, close to the North Korean border.
FBI Director James Comey accused Beijing of waging cyber warfare against
the U.S. in October, raising the real problem of the U.S. getting any
cooperation from China. Calling
U.S. allegations of cyber warfare “fabricated out of thin air,” China blamed the
U.S. for the Edward Snowden spying scandal in China and elsewhere. Whether or not China believes North
Korea hacked Sony’s computers, they won’t betray their communist ally.
Problems with the U.S. getting any real cooperation with China on the
North Korean hacking scandal run deep into the ideological divide. Like North Korea, Russia and any other communist state, China believes it has a right to
suppress free speech and spy on any citizen for critiquing the government. No communist state tolerates
criticizing the government, viewing movies like “The Interview” as blasphemous. “It could be China, but China has
other ways to show it is unhappy with North Korea,” said James Lewis, senior
fellow at the Washington, D.C-based Center for Strategic and International
Studies, refusing to speculate on whether or not China aided North Korea. China doesn’t necessarily condone
North Korea’s hack of Sony Pictures but they understand how North Korea feels
about a distasteful film like “The Interview.” There’s no First Amendment in North Korea or any other communist state.
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