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Norks: We might be aggressive but we didn't hack Sony!

Quiet Mandiant mops blood amid din of spin

North Korea has denied it was the entity behind the epic hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

An unnamed diplomat based in New York told The Voice of America the country was not linked to the attack despite speculation patriotic hackers had targeted the media giant in retaliation for a satirical film mocking leader Kim Jong Un.

"Linking the DPRK (North Korea) to the Sony hacking is another fabrication targeting the country," the anonymous official told the publication.

"My country publicly declared that it would follow international norms banning hacking and piracy."

The claims don't rule out North Korean involvement although rumours to the contrary were not proven.

Suspicion fell on the Hermit Kingdom for the hack after Pyongyang promised to "mercilessly destroy" those associated with the offending film The Interview dubbing distributors "undisguised sponsor(s) of terrorism".

North Korea's Unit 121 hacker unit was thought by some quarters to be behind the attack and may be capable given its skills in creating the wiper malware used in the Dark Seoul attacks two years ago.

However the invective was not uncharacteristic for Pyongyang meaning forensics firm Mandiant recruited to mop up the hack would likely be the first to learn of the origins and intent of attackers.

Speculation also led to claims high-quality Sony-watermarked unreleased and new films now sharing on BitTorrent were leaked as a result of the hack. Those films may have however been leaked by piracy-inclined staff at any number of global distributors handed copies of films in the lead up to the Oscars.

Indeed one pirate-posting bot on infamous site The Pirate Bay has already been dubbed OSCARS2014 and posted links to the leaked films in question.

Vulture South's inquiries to the pirate groups have gone unanswered.

Sony is reeling from the breach, which has throughly compromised staff and enterprise credentials including payroll data, personal information, passwords and RSA SecureID tokens. ®

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