N.S.A. Tapped Into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say | 18 Jan 2015 |The trail that led American officials to blame North Korea for the destructive cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in November winds back to 2010, when the National Security Agency scrambled to break into the computer systems of North Korea. The American spy agency [in violation of international law] drilled into the Chinese networks that connect North Korea to the outside world, picked through connections in Malaysia favored by North Korean hackers and penetrated directly into the North with the help of South Korea and other American allies, according to former United States and foreign officials, computer experts later briefed on the operations and a newly disclosed N.S.A. document.
Prominent North Korean Defector Lied About His Story of Captivity, Said to Be ‘Still Lying’ | 18 Jan 2015 | He was the [CIA] poster boy for human rights atrocities in North Korea; a soft-spoken survivor of the North’s cruel gulags who eventually met such dignitaries as John Kerry in his campaign to focus attention on the North’s abuses. Now, that survivor fabulist, Shin Dong-hyuk, is retracting central facts of his widely reported life story, memorialized in a 2012 book, “Escape from Camp 14,” by a former Washington Post reporter that has been published in 27 languages. Mr. Shin’s latest account has raised its own questions. “He is still lying,” said a North Korean defector who said he was in Camp 18 from 1967 to 1988 and would speak to journalists only on condition of anonymity because he still had family members in the North.
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