U.S. Spies Say They Tracked ‘Sony Hackers’ For Years

◼ American spies have detailed dossiers on the North Koreans who the U.S. says were behind the Sony attack. But the still-secret evidence likely won’t convince skeptics. - Shane Harris/Daily Beast

Ever since the Obama administration made its public case against North Korea for the Sony hack, a slew of independent cybersecurity experts have been skeptical of the government’s public case against Pyongyang, calling it flimsy and circumstantial. But sources familiar with the investigation say that the most damning evidence against the Sony hackers was obtained in a secret, and years earlier, during previous intelligence-gathering efforts. The notion that the FBI was basing its claims of North Korean culpability solely off evidence from the Sony hack is “completely untrue. They’re also using evidence that they’ve been collecting for years,” said one person privy to some details of the investigation.

If there are misgivings within the administration about holding North Korea publicly to account, they weren’t on display on Friday. The White House and the Treasury Department announced a round of sanctions against three North Korean organizations, among them the country’s intelligence bureau, and ten individuals, including government officials and others who work for a North Korea’s main weapons dealer.

The sanctioned individuals weren’t involved in the Sony attack, administration officials said. But the decision to punish them and by extension the North Korean regime came after the White House decided the Sony hack “crossed a threshold,” as one senior administration official put it, going beyond cyber espionage or harassing attacks on Web sites and into the realm of destruction and coercion. The intruders had deleted large amounts of data from Sony’s networks, and threatened to attack movie theatres that showed Sony’s North Korean satire, The Interview....

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