Inside the Sony Hack

On November 24, 2014, Sony Pictures was hacked by a group calling themselves the "Guardians of Peace," which the United States government later identified as being hackers from North Korea, taking vengeance on the studio for producing the film The Interview with Seth Rogen and James Franco, in which the two actors portrayed journalists hired by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong Un. But this identification was suspect from the start, as Sony had recently undergone massive layoffs because of financial troubles. In addition, according to many private cybersecurity companies at the time, the way in which the hackers moved through the system suggested great familiarity with the network. New York Times bestselling author Kent Heckenlively tells this story from the perspective of the most prominent of these cybersecurity companies, Norse Corporation, who eventually presented their findings at the Pentagon in January of 2015. To this day, the US government has never released the information supporting their claim of North Korean involvement.