US investigators reportedly believe hackers working for North Korea are responsible for a debilitating cyberattack against Sony Pictures which has damaged the studio's computer systems and resulted in it pulling one of its Christmas-day releases.

The incident is the most devastating cyberattack ever on a US-based company. And it now appears that the US is close to claiming that a state sponsor is behind the incident.

If North Korea really is involved, it may leave the US in the position of having to formulate some kind of a response to the breach.

America's leverage is minimal, as Dave Aitel, a former NSA research scientist and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Immunity, explained to Business Insider earlier this week. Many offensive options are problematic given "the technical complexities involved, legislative challenges, or the international escalation they will generate," Aitel said.

But the US could also respond by shifting its legal and diplomatic framework for how it approaches cyber-attacks.

One proactive move the US should consider, according to Aitel, is "declaring certain cyberattacks terrorist acts and the groups behind them terrorists," which would "set in motion a wider range of legal authority, US government/military resources, and international options."

The new legal framework "would also make it harder for hacker networks to operate in key international areas, as it would require a greater level of cooperation from US allies, EU members, NATO, G20, etc.," in addition to making it easier "for the US government to target the funding of not only the hacker networks, but any companies or organizations that aid them, even in incidentally or unknowingly."

Since 9/11, the US has officially considered acts of terrorism to be acts of war. Aitel's suggestion is to update this understanding so that it includes what would be "cyberterrorists" committing cyber acts of war, like the one that hit Sony.

"Frankly, we need to start talking about what role and responsibility the US government should have in securing US companies from cyberattacks," Aitel said.

More immediately, the US has some limited diplomatic options in response to the hack once North Korean culpability is established.

It could quietly pressure friendly regional governments to crack down on pro-Pyongyang organizations involved in funneling foreign currency and intelligence to the North Korean government, such as Chongryon, the regime's unofficial adjunct in Japan.

It could also dial back or completely freeze trade with the country, which was worth $21.9 million in 2014 — a relatively small amount, but a dramatic increase over the $6.6 million in trade from the year before. And the US could freeze any ongoing discussion of restoring large-scale food aid to the north, something that was halted in 2008.

An Act Of War?

Even with these rew reports of North Korean responsibility, the attack wasn't an act of war according to established guidelines of cyberwarfare.

NATO's Tallinn Manual defines an act of cyberwar that permits a military response as "a cyber operation, whether offensive or defensive, that is reasonably expected to cause injury or death to persons or damage or destruction to objects."

But the world after the Sony Pictures hack may require a new perspective, especially if North Korea is more conclusively identified as the culprit.

Aitel argues that while the attack "doesn’t meet the threshold for a response by our military," it should still be viewed as an act of war.

"We need to change the way we think about cyberattacks,"Aitel told Business Insider in an email. "In many cases, these aren’t 'crimes' — they’re acts of war. A non-kinetic attack (i.e., destructive malware, destructive computer network attack) that causes just as much damage as a kinetic attack (i.e., a missile or bomb) should be viewed at the same level of urgency and need for US government/military response."

With the US reportedly close to blaming North Korea, the Sony hack could be a test-case for how the US approaches an entirely new type of cyber-incident — attacks in which state-sponsored hackers deal substantial economic and reputational damage to American companies.

The Sony hack is the second major attack in which hackers targeted American corporate infrastructure on a large scale with the primary goal of destroying it (as opposed to stealing from it or spying on it). 

An estimated 11 terabytes of information was taken, revealing information including scripts, unreleased movies, actor compensation, and off-the-cuff conversations among high-level Sony executives.

The attack's political motives, along with Sony's public humiliation, raise the specter of an entirely new phenomenon: hacks that combine "national rivalry, hacker ideology, performance art, ritual humiliation and data combustion, culminating in complete corporate chaos," as John Gapper explained in the Financial Times.

The malware used reportedly bore traces of Korean language packs and resembled software deployed during previous attacks against South Korean targets. This, along with the reports of the US's reported assignment of blame to Pyongyang, reinforces the idea that North Korea or its supporters hacked Sony as retribution for the release of "The Interview,"the now-canceled film in which James Franco and Seth Rogen play talk-show hosts sent into the country to assassinate Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.

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The US is finally getting ready to blame North Korea for the massive Sony Pictures Entertainment hack most likely linked to the movie "The Interview," starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. 

But apparently problems with the movie started much sooner. Sony Corp.'s CEO was already freaking out over the summer about specific gruesome scenes in the movie "The Interview" that likely angered North Korea.

The movie tells the story of journalists instructed by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong-un after scoring an interview with the North Korea dictator.

North Korea's subsequent hack — which released tons of cringe-worthy emails— also revealed that Sony Corp's CEO Kazuo Hirai was unusually involved in the production of "The Interview" after North Korea called the movie an "act of war" after seeing promos for it.

In fact, Hirai "broke a 25-year tradition" by interfering with the production of the irreverent comedy starting Seth Rogen and James Franco, The New York Times has reported. Generally, an executive from parent company Sony Corp. wouldn't insert himself into the decisions of the company's usually independent studio, Sony Pictures.

Hacked emails cited by The Times showed that Hirai told the studio to tone down a scene showing Kim's head exploding. Seth Rogen sent an email to Sony Pictures executives that apparently addressed Hirai's concerns about the exploding head. Here's that email, via Gawker:

A few days later, Sony Pictures Co-Chairman Amy Pascal sent an email to Hirai outlining the ways in which the head-exploding scene was toned down. He ultimately approved "shot #337," which cuts down on "face melting,""fire in the hair,""embers on the face" and the "head explosion," according to Gawker.

Sony Corp.'s Japan-based CEO may have been more sensitive than American executives to the possibility of angering North Korea, as The New York Times reported. It was just 30 years ago that North Korea was still kidnapping Japanese so they could serve as Japanese-language instructors in North Korea, according to The Times.

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A Houston-area plumbing company owner has been getting threatening phone calls after one of his former work trucks turned up in a photograph on a Twitter feed that appears to show a militant group fighting in Syria's civil war.

Jeff Oberholtzer traded in a Ford F-250 more than a year ago that bore the name of his father's 32-year-old family business "Mark-1 Plumbing" in large white letters on the door as well as the company's phone number, according to local reports.

In the photo on the Twitter feed, the name of the company is visible and the truck has been fitted with a tripod-mounted weapon, which is shown firing off a round. The name of the militant group is seen in Arabic in the top right hand corner.

"To think something we would use to pull trailers now is being used for terror, it's crazy," Oberholtzer told a reporter for the television station KHOU in an exclusive interview on Tuesday, adding he was no longer answering calls. He was not available for comment Wednesday.

"We have nothing to do with terror, at all," he added.

Police have increased patrols around the business in Texas City after the KHOU report aired, according to Derek Duckett, Texas City emergency manager.

A spokesman for the car dealer AutoNation, which acquired the truck at trade-in, said it was sent to auction and most likely went through at least three dealers before ending up in Syria.

The spokesman added that Oberholtzer should have removed the company name before trading in the vehicle.

(Editing by Jon Herskovitz and Eric Walsh)

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The White House's National Security Council has released a statement saying the government is "working tirelessly to bring the perpetrators of the [Sony] attack to justice" and considering how to respond to the massive hack.

US officials seem ready to place the blame for the Sony hack on North Korea, and an announcement could come as early as Thursday.

The council's statement comes after Sony announced that it is pulling the controversial comedy "The Interview" from its Christmas Day release. The company likely won't release the movie anywhere anytime soon.

Seth Rogen and James Franco star in the movie as a pair of journalists who, under the guise of filming a television interview, are tasked by the CIA with killing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. 

North Korea has openly criticized the film, calling it an "act of war."

Here's the full statement from the National Security Council:

The U.S. government closely monitors all reports of breaches affecting U.S. companies, U.S. consumers, and U.S. infrastructure.  We know that criminals and foreign countries regularly seek to gain access to government and private sector networks – both in the United States and elsewhere. 

The U.S. government has offered Sony Pictures Entertainment support and assistance in response to the attack.  The FBI has the lead for the investigation. The United States is investigating attribution and will provide an update at the appropriate time.  The U.S. government is working tirelessly to bring the perpetrators of this attack to justice, and we are considering a range of options in weighing a potential response.  

We are aware of Sony’s announcement regarding ‘The Interview.’  The United States respects artists' and entertainers' right to produce and distribute content of their choosing. The U.S. government has no involvement in such decisions.  We take very seriously any attempt to threaten or limit artists’ freedom of speech or of expression.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin held a three-hour news conference on Thursday, speaking about his country's economy and the collapse of the ruble.

The interview — which had a bunch of bizarre and clever moments— also addressed Russia's conflicts with the West.

Several English-speaking journalists, including Max Seddon of BuzzFeed and Paul Sonne of The Wall Street Journal, tweeted translations of Putin's statements, and NBC News carried a live stream with translation.

Here are some highlights:

• Putin insisted that growth was "inevitable" and that Russia could dig out of its economic crisis in two years at most.
• He refused to call the ruble's collapse a crisis, and he blamed it partly on sanctions from the West.
• He said that regarding Ukraine, Russia was right and the West was wrong.
• He compared the Russian invasion of Crimea to taking Texas from Mexico.
• He implied that the US was aiming to disarm Russia and asked: "Do we want our bear to just become a stuffed animal?"

The Economy

The ruble weakened against the dollar just ahead of the news conference. Russia's currency has fallen over 40% against the dollar and the euro since June, hitting a record low of 80 rubles to the dollar and 100 rubles to the euro earlier this week.

Early on, Putin commented on Russia's currency crisis. He said it had been "provoked by external factors" and that the central bank and government were taking adequate measures to deal with the economic situation.

He also insisted that growth is "inevitable" and that Russia could dig out of the crisis in two years at most.

Putin said he is optimistic because he thinks the economy will eventually adjust to low fuel prices. He also said that Russia must step up efforts to diversify its economy so that Russia is not so reliant on oil.

Before discussing the ruble crisis, Putin opened on a higher note, citing 2014 gross-domestic-product growth of 0.6% and noting that Russia saw a record agricultural harvest despite turbulence in financial markets.

He later shied away from calling the ruble collapse a crisis.

"I don't think I can call the situation a 'crisis'; you can call it whatever you want," he said, adding that he thinks the central bank and government are taking the correct approach.

He also blamed Russia's economic situation partly on sanctions by the West over Ukraine, saying the sanctions are responsible for 25% to 30% of the ruble's problems.

Russia's economy is widely expected to fall into a recession next year because of collapsing oil prices and economic sanctions by the West.

Putin noted that the country's central bank has reserves of $419 billion, which he said is enough to maintain the "social situation" in Russia. He was also careful to say Russia would not drain its reserves trying to protect the ruble.

Despite the country's economic troubles, Russians still widely support Putin. His approval rating hit record highs this year, with 80% of Russians saying they support him.

The West

Putin also addressed tensions with the West.

"Our Western partners decided that they won and that they are an empire, and they began to squeeze everyone else out," he said.

He also referenced the Berlin Wall, saying that new "virtual" walls were being built through a NATO expansion.

"We want our partners to understand that the best way is to stop building those walls and to build a united humanitarian space," Putin said.

Putin later implied that the West is trying to disarm Russia.

He compared the country to a bear and said the West would "always try to put it in chains and ... take out its teeth and claws, which in this case means our strategic nuclear deterrent.

"Sometimes I think, maybe they'll let the bear eat berries and honey in the forest; maybe they will leave it in peace," he added. "They will not."

Putin concluded by asking: "Do we want our bear to just become a stuffed animal?"

When a journalist asked Putin about talk of a "new Cold War" brewing, Putin said that Russia had just been defending its interests, and he implied that the US was the aggressive party, not Russia. He insisted that Russia was not attacking anyone.

He then said the sanctions that had been imposed on Russia were "illegitimate and illegal."

Ukraine

A Ukrainian journalist asked Putin how many soldiers Putin sent to Ukraine and what he told the families of dead soldiers.

Putin said Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine were volunteers and couldn't be called mercenaries because they were not paid. He also blamed Kiev for starting the conflict.

"The problem is that after the coup d’etat ... instead of starting a political dialogue, the new authorities started using law enforcement officers," Putin said. "When that didn’t work out, they started using the army; when that didn’t work out, they started using other means, such as an economic blockade."

Putin also said that regarding Ukraine, Russia was right and the West was wrong.

He didn't address how many Russian fighters were in Ukraine, nor did he give a death toll from the conflict.

Estimates put the number of dead at about 4,000 since fighting broke out between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels in April. Kiev, Ukraine's capital, says Russia is supporting the separatists and has 10,000 troops on the ground.

Crimea

Another journalist asked whether Russia's economic crisis was payback for the country's annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

Putin said the troubles with the ruble were not payback for Crimea, but rather "payback for our natural desire to survive as a nation."

"It's not a matter of Crimea — we are defending our independence, our sovereignty and our right to exist," he said. "We should all understand this."

Putin also compared the invasion of Crimea to the US taking Texas from Mexico, saying Russia was just managing its territories and protecting its sovereignty.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Putin was asked whether he regretted pardoning Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and owner of the country's biggest oil company, because Khodorkovsky recently said he wanted to be president.

To that Putin replied, "President of which country?"

Putin said he ordered the pardon because Khodorkovsky's mother was ill, and a mother is a "sacred thing." He added that he didn't regret it. 

Khodorkovsky spent a decade in prison for fraud and was released last year.

China

Putin said China is Russia's biggest trade partner and that there were no problems between the two countries.

He said the two have many common interests and have helped stabilize the international arena.

Putin added that Russia would seek to increase trade with China and noted that their trade balance with China would reach $90 billion this year.

He said Russia's gas deal with China would be beneficial for both sides despite the high costs.

Russia brokered the deal in an effort to become more independent from the West, given the sanctions that have hindered Russia's ability to develop energy reserves and raise finance abroad, Reuters reports.

A Possible Coup

A Reuters reporter asked Putin whether he thought a coup was possible in Russia.

Putin said he isn't worried, and that he would not be ousted, because Russians knew that he acted in the "overwhelming interest" of the majority of the population.

He noted that the Kremlin is well protected: "We don't have palaces, so there can't be any palace coups. We have the Kremlin, and it's well secured."

The reporter said that although Putin blamed the economic crisis on external forces, even those within his circle were known to blame Putin.

Putin, grinning, said: "Give me their names!"

Inequality

Putin insisted that there are not elites in Russia, and that while there are rich and poor, all people are equal.

"There is elite wine, resorts, but not people," he said. "Who is the Russian elite? The peasants, the hard workers."

Russia has notoriously high wealth disparity.

A report from Credit Suisse in 2013 said that Russia has the highest rate of income inequality in the world.

Watch the news conference in full:

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says his administration is taking the cyberattack against Sony studios seriously. He says people should "go to the movies."

Sony said Wednesday it was canceling the Dec. 25 release of "The Interview" after many theaters said they would hold off on screening the film.

Threats have been made against theaters planning to show the film, a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korea's leader.

A U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity said federal investigators have connected North Korea to the hacking.

Obama told ABC News in an interview Wednesday that the administration will be "vigilant" and will alert the public if there is evidence of a "serious and credible" threat.

But for now, Obama says: "My recommendation would be that people go to the movies."

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Thursday's cover of the New York Post hits the big stories of the moment: The Obama administration's announcing normalizing of relations with Cuba after decades of US policies aimed at isolating the island country, and Sony's decision to pull "The Interview" after North Korea-linked hackers took down the company's systems and took dozens of terabytes of information.

NOW WATCH: How Forensic Accountants Use Benford's Law To Detect Fraud

SEE ALSO: Now That The US Government Thinks North Korea Hacked Sony, Here's How It Could Respond

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Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a marathon press conference Thursday in which he discussed the economy, the collapse of the ruble, Ukraine, China, tensions with the West, talk of a "new Cold War," and more.

Over the course of the three-and-a-half-hour press conference, Putin also made quite a few witty remarks. We've picked out some of the best ones.

He compared Russia to a bear that the West wants to chain up and subdue:

Today's animal-based metaphor: "Perhaps the Russian bear should quietly eat berries & not chase piglets in the taiga"pic.twitter.com/xb04XLefwL

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) December 18, 2014

To finish that metaphor, Putin's point was that if the bear *did* quietly eat berries, West would CHAIN IT UP AND SAW OFF ITS TEETH (really)

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) December 18, 2014

He compared Russia's invasion of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea to taking Texas from Mexico:

Putin on Crimea: "Was it fair to snatch away Texas from Mexico?"

— max seddon (@maxseddon) December 18, 2014

He dismissed the notion of a coup in Russia:

Q: Is there a chance of a palace coup? A: Relax, we don't have any palaces.

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) December 18, 2014

And then got a little silly:

He discussed his love life:

Voronezh journo: "My aunt's friend asks if you have time for personal life, wink wink" New Kremlin star being born? pic.twitter.com/0Juo4bl3Ti

— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) December 18, 2014

Putin: I was asked if I love someone? I said well - yes. I haven't turned into a monster.

— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) December 18, 2014

He bashed NATO, comparing it to the Berlin Wall:

He made this semi-threatening pronouncement: 

Reuters journalist tells Putin there are people close to you who blame you for Ukraine, rouble crisis etc as leader “Name them!” Putin jokes

— Tom Parfitt (@parfitt_tom) December 18, 2014

Putin said he doesn't even know how much money he makes in his role as president: 

He made it clear that he's not concerned that someone else could take the presidency away from him:

Journalist says Khodorkovsky now wants to run for president. "Of what country?"#Putin asks, deadpan. Journalists chuckle. Ha. Ha. Ha.

— RAGreeneCNN (@RAGreeneCNN) December 18, 2014

He insisted that there are no elites in Russia and thanks the country's "peasants" who live in poverty:

Putin talking about peasants again. "You can't do without peasants. Let's congratulate them on this year's harvest."

— max seddon (@maxseddon) December 18, 2014

He made a joke about a reporter who was asking a question being drunk. It later emerged that the man had survived multiple strokes:

Apparently drunk journalist asks #Putin about drink - 'You've already had yours' quips President http://t.co/7I0ksTYKhs#PutinPresser

— RT (@RT_com) December 18, 2014

Correction: Kirov journo who asked #Putin about #Kvas NOT drunk - survived multiple strokes

— RT (@RT_com) December 18, 2014

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SEE ALSO: Putin Just Gave An Surreal End-Of-The-Year Press Conference

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Pakistan has released on bail the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, multiple sources are reporting, two days after the Pakistani Taliban carried out an attack that killed 141 people, mostly children, in Peshawar. 

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the former head of the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, has been granted a release following his payment of 1 million rupees ($9,950) as a surety bond.

The Mumbai terror attack, which Lakhvi orchestrated, killed 165 people and an additional nine gunmen. 

The BBC reports that it remains "unclear on what grounds the court ordered Mr Lakhvi's bail." 

The timing of Lakhvi's release is particularly dubious. The Pakistani Taliban attack on Monday has led to a public outcry over the country's murky relationship with terrorism. Pakistan, or at least the country's secretive security and intelligence apparatus, has cultivated the Afghan Taliban in order to maintain influence in the country's restive western neighbor. At the same time, elements of the government have also aided Islamists like Lakhvi for attacks against Indian targets.

On Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pledged to end militancy in the country and said it would reinstate the death penalty in cases tied to terrorism. 

Lakhvi has been designated by the UN as a terrorist, and the decision to release him has prompted outrage from neighboring India.

"We cannot accept that LeT's chief operation commander Zakiur Lakhvi, one of the key conspirators of the Mumbai terror attacks in which so many innocent people were slaughtered, a person designated as an international terrorist by the UNSC, is being released on bail," Syed Akbaruddin, India's External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson, has said.  

Lakhvi had filed his bail applications yesterday, just a day after the Peshawar attacks. 

SEE ALSO: Even the Afghan Taliban are saying the Pakistan massacre was 'un-Islamic'

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The climactic moment that portrays Kim Jong Un's head exploding is clearly the main reason why North Korea is upset with Sony's "The Interview," but the movie is filled with other things the hermit dictatorship would not like.

Hackers linked to North Korea savaged Sony, forcing the company to cancel the movie's release by leaking thousands of private documents, threatening to leak more, and threatening the safety of moviegoers at theaters.

We saw the film a few weeks ago at a screening with Seth Rogen himself as he drank beer and high-fived the audience. Here are some parts that we enjoyed but North Korea might not [WARNING: SPOILERS]:

• The opening scene portrays a young Korean girl singing a beautiful and poignant song that we realize — through subtitles — is so virulent and anti-American it's laughable, with lines like, "May they drown in their blood and feces."
• The film quickly establishes a plot to assassinate Kim. It happens after Aaron Rapoport (Rogen), the broadcast news producer of the fluffy news show "Skylark Tonight," and host Dave Skylark (James Franco) discover that Kim is a huge fan of their show. As soon as they set up an interview with the dictator, they are contacted by the CIA with a request that they take him out.
• Randall Park's portrayal of Kim is one of the film's greatest assets. While on the surface he's cold and intimidating, Kim frequently acts ridiculous, like when he meets Skylark and turns into a shrieking fanboy. Tons of laughs stem from this relationship, as Kim takes Skylark on his own personal tour of his country, complete with fruity drinks, Katy Perry sing-a-longs, adorable puppies, and general juvenile tomfoolery.
• While Skylark starts to think Kim and North Korea aren't half-bad, there's a turning moment late in the film when Rapoport rushes into a North Korean supermarket only to find that it's filled with fake food. The functional society is a sham, and North Koreans are actually starving. 
• The most offensive and buzzed-about aspect of the film is the assassination itself. The original plan put in place by the CIA was to poison the dictator with a ricin-strip that Skylark was to apply during a handshake with Kim during the interview. But when the moment comes, Skylark no longer has the ricin, and instead he tries to use the television airtime to turn North Korea against Kim by making the dictator appear weak on camera. When Kim realizes what's happening, he pulls out a gun and shoots Skylark on air — but Skylark is wearing a vest and survives.
• As Aaron and Skylark make their escape, they steal a North Korean tank as Kim flies above in a helicopter and prepares to kill them both as well as launch nuclear weapons all over the world. The particularly controversial head explosion occurs here, when Aaron and Skylark fire from their tank and effectively blow up the helicopter and Kim. The camera lingers on Kim's exploding face as Katy Perry's "Firework" plays in the background, making the moment even more surreal. 

Leaked emails revealed that there was some tinkering behind the scenes to tone down the sheer violence on display during the supreme leader's death, and the version shown to audiences isn't nearly as graphic as it was previously. The exact specifications of these changes have also been made public.

Following Sony's cancellation of the release, the US announced its intention to officially blame North Korea for the hack, having gathered enough evidence. The White House officially responded also, stating that the US planned to continue investigating and that the FBI had the lead.

NOW WATCH: Here's The Trailer For 'The Interview' — The Movie The Hackers Don't Want You To See

SEE ALSO: Here's How America Could Respond To The Sony Hack

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Russia's wealthiest are getting demolished this year.

Over the course of the year, the 20 richest Russians have lost a combined $62 billion, according to Bloomberg.

(For a reference point, that's three times the GDP of Afghanistan.)

And while 2014 certainly hasn't been easy for Russian billionaires, the last week has been straight-up brutal: The 20 richest lost a whopping $10 billion in just three days.

The major drop over the last three days is due to several factors. On early Tuesday morning (late Monday Eastern time), the Russian central bank raised rates from 10.5% to 17%, in order to limit the devaluation of the ruble and the risk of inflation.

In a sentence, it did not work. The Russian currency fell to new lows, reaching 80 rubles to the dollar and 100 rubles to the euro that day. Although the ruble has recovered a bit, it dangled around 63 on Thursday.

Since the end of June, the ruble has dropped 50%. 

The biggest loser in dollar value is the CEO of Russia's second-largest gas producer, Leonid Mikhelson, who has lost $8.7 billion since January — twice the GDP of Sierra Leone.

The cofounder of a commodity-trading company, Gennady Timchenko, and steel magnate Vladimir Lisin lost $7.8 and $7.5 billion, respectively — roughly the GDP of Rwanda.

And percentage-wise, Vladimir Evtushenko was hit the worst. Formerly Russia's 14th-richest person, Evtushenko watched 90% of this wealth evaporate over the year. To make things worse, he was placed under house arrest by a Moscow court back in October.

"A chill went through everybody's spine when [Putin] arrested him," Rob Lafranco said on Bloomberg TV early Thursday.

Evtushenko was officially released on Wednesday — just one day before Putin's annual press conference, which was seen as a "message that the state will not target business owners as the economy threatens to collapse," according to Bloomberg.

"The optimists who thought in March that everything would be all right in the end now understand that nothing will be OK," Stanislav Belovsky, a Kremlin adviser during Putin's first term, told Bloomberg.

"Russia's richest take this situation very negatively," he added, "but they do not have the tools to reverse it."

You can watch the full Bloomberg interview here.

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Wal-Mart, Amazon, Sears, and K-Mart are under fire for selling toy guns that look too realistic. 

New York's attorney general has sent cease-and-desist letters to the retailers ordering them to stop selling the toys, which include plastic versions of assault rifles and handguns, the AP reports. 

New York state law prohibits the sale of  toy guns in "realistic" colors such as black, blue, silver, and aluminum, unless it has an orange stripe running down both sides of the barrel and the front end of the barrel.

An investigation found that Wal-Mart, Amazon, K-Mart, and others were allegedly selling prohibited toy guns online.

A K-Mart store in Rochester was also found to be selling the banned toys, according to the attorney general's office. 

Among the toys that investigators obtained was this AK-47 lookalike: 

Investigators were also able to purchase this toy handgun, which doesn't have orange stripes running down the sides of the barrel, as state law mandates.The attorney general is cracking down on toy guns one month after a 12-year-old boy carrying a pellet gun was shot and killed by police in Ohio.  

In New York, at least four people have been killed since 1997 and one child was seriously wounded when law enforcement officers mistook toy guns for real guns, according to the attorney general.

"When toy guns are mistaken for real guns, there can be tragic consequences," Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement. "New York State law is clear: retailers cannot put children and law enforcement at risk by selling toy guns that are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing."

Wal-Mart said Thursday that it has responded by placing a shipping block on the toy guns in question.

"Once this matter was brought to our attention we placed a shipping block on our website to prevent the mentioned items from being sent to the state of New York," a spokesman said. "We’re also confident that measures are in place to prevent these items from being sold at our New York stores."

SEE ALSO: Wal-Mart CEO Says Customers Don't Want To Walk Through Huge Supercenters

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The day before the Senate Intelligence Committee's recent publication of a damning report on the CIA's torture of terrorism suspects, former vice president Dick Cheney defended the agency's methods as “absolutely, totally justified."

"They deserve a lot of praise," he told The New York Times. "As far as I'm concerned, they ought to be decorated, not criticized."

But in March 1992, as the country's secretary of defense, Cheney received an investigative report on "Improper Material in Spanish-Language Intelligence Training Manuals." Cheney is one of the CIA interrogation program's biggest public apologists, but his reaction to this earlier report connecting the US to torture was very different.

The report referred to passages in manuals distributed to military personnel and intelligence schools in five US-allied Latin American countries — Colombia, Ecuador, Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru — that were ideological battlegrounds in the Cold War struggle between the US and the Soviet Union. The manuals included instruction on violent interrogation techniques, including the beating of detainees.

The School of the Americas, the Georgia-based institution founded by the US Department of Defense to train Latin American government officials in anti-communist measures, also received some of these manuals. "As many as a thousand copies" were distributed through Latin American countries and the school between 1987 and 1991.

Apparently sympathetic to the report's worry that "the offensive and objectionable material in the manuals ... undermines US credibility, and could result in significant embarrassment," Cheney supported the removal of the manuals from circulation.

In effect, he acknowledged that the promotion and export of torture techniques in US-allied governments could harm American interests.

The report presented the offending material as having slipped through the administrative cracks, finding it "incredible" that the manual's torture methods had "evaded the established system of doctrinal controls."

It found no evidence of "a deliberate and orchestrated attempt to violate DoD or Army policies" by promoting torture-like techniques.

Others active in government at the time now disagree with this general assessment.

"During the long years of the Cold War, the CIA propagated the offensive techniques among our allies worldwide," former Sen. Mark Gravel of Alaska said in an appearance on "Democracy Now" this week.

Gravel said the US reversed course only at a very late stage in its protracted showdown with the Soviet Union.

"As the Cold War wound up in the 1980s, the CIA did a review, repudiated the doctrine, developed a policy of not using coercive techniques" he said. "The Defense Department recalled the training manuals from Latin American militaries, under Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. These manuals were destroyed, and it was all over."

Cheney apparently helped facilitate this change.

"Cheney approved these correction actions," British jurist Philippe Sands wrote in "Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.""Under his signature was a handwritten note from his General Counsel. 'I concur,' he wrote, adding that the Senate's intelligence and armed services committees would be briefed 'to let them know we are correcting it.'"

But the use of torture by the US wasn't over for good, as the scandal over the mistreatment of prisoners by US service members at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and the Senate Intelligence Committee's recent torture report demonstrate.

With the Soviet Union's disintegration in 1991, leftist movements and governments in Latin America were much less of a strategic threat to the US. And the torture referred to in the manuals wasn't actually being carried out by the US government nor used on individuals potentially guilty of having plotted attacks against the US.

But after Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney — who contextualized the Senate's torture report on Fox News by saying that the CIA had been expected (and succeeded in) catching "the bastards who killed three thousand of us on 9/11"— most likely felt greater justification than ever to dip into a toolkit that he appears to have rejected less than a decade earlier.

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Kim Jong-un assassination comedy "The Interview" was controversial even before it provoked North Korean hackers to launch a vicious cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.

"The Interview" was originally scheduled to be released in October but was delayed until Christmas Day after North Korea declared the film an "act of war" and threatened a "resolute and merciless" response if the US government failed to stop its release.

I found it hard to take North Korea's assertions seriously after viewing the relentlessly crass and silly finished product at a screening a few weeks ago. It's clearly a comedy far more than a statement on foreign policy. While co-director and star Seth Rogen weaves in plenty of details that reflect poorly on North Korea, "The Interview" never feels like an attack on the hermit kingdom.

But as we now know, this didn't stop North Korea from acting out even though Sony Pictures took some steps to appease the dictatorship during the film's production.

While it may seem ridiculous to change an American film based on a dictator's demands, Sony made minor digital alterations, including covering up "thousands of buttons worn by characters in the film" since they "depict the actual hardware worn by the North Korean military to honor the country's leader."

Sony also toned down the explosion of Kim Jong-un's head during the film's climactic assassination.

Despite these concessions, hackers linked to North Korea savaged Sony. Those hackers effectively forced the company to cancel the movie's release by leaking thousands of private documents, threatening to leak more, and threatening the safety of moviegoers at theaters.

Here's a bit more about the wonderfully goofy movie most people won't get to see. 

In the opening scene, a young Korean girl serenades a gathering of fellow Koreans with sing-songy insults to America. This scene sets the bar right away, and the film never takes itself too seriously.

James Franco plays Dave Skylark, the host of "Skylark Tonight," a tabloid news program that falls more in line with TMZ than CNN. Aaron Rapaport (Rogen) is the show's producer, and after 1,000 episodes of asinine celebrity coverage, he wishes to be taken seriously. When Skylark finds out Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of North Korea, is a fan of his program, he sets up an exclusive interview with the dictator in North Korea. When the CIA gets wind of this, they bring Skylark and Rapaport in and ask them to assassinate him.

As all good comedies should, 'The Interview" has heart, and the on-screen chemistry between Franco and Rogen keeps everything afloat. The script features plenty of Rogen's trademark witty, crass humor and, just like in "Pineapple Express," the off-the-cuff banter between the two leads never gets old. Lizzy Caplan is also great (but underused) as the CIA agent who "honeypots" the duo into the assassination. 

"The Interview" is full of pop culture references, Hollywood in-jokes, and hysterically funny cameos. Besides the barrage of unexpected celebrities, one of the film's biggest laughs comes from Franco's rendition of a pop song that rivals his Britney Spears piano number from "Spring Breakers." While it's not as inherently self-referential as "This Is The End" since Rogen and Franco aren't playing themselves, there is similar humor at times, as Rogen shows that he isn't afraid to make fun of anyone.

The film was poised to be another surefire hit for Rogen, whose last two starring vehicles ("Neighbors,""This Is The End") were modestly budgeted at $18 million and $32 million respectively and each managed to gross over $100 million domestically. The reported budget for "The Interview" is around $30 million, so factoring in Rogen's track record, the film shouldn't have had any trouble raking in some serious cash when it opened on Christmas Day.

Unfortunately, the movie's unprecedented suppression makes any profit impossible, and Sony will lose around $100 million from the film's non-release alone. The long-term damage is impossible to assess at this point, but Sony certainly has an uphill battle going forward.

SEE ALSO: We Saw 'The Interview' Weeks Ago, And It's Clear Why North Korea Hates It

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US-led air strikes against ISIS in Iraq have killed three of the militant group's top leaders, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

In an interview with the newspaper, US General Martin Dempsey said the senior leaders were killed in recent weeks as part of expanding effort with partner nations to combat the militants.

“These are high-value targets, senior leadership,” Dempsey said.

ISIS has suffered the loss of several top-level figures, including leader Ayad al-Baghdadi's top aide, since US-led airstrikes against the group began in August. But as the WSJ notes, the group has been able to effectively replace its fallen leadership and it isn't expected that this latest development will be decisive to the anti-ISIS campaign's outcome.

Meanwhile, a mass grave of over 200 of ISIS victims was found in eastern Syria this week, while frequent coalition airstrikes have been aiding a Kurdish offensive aimed at retaking Sinjar and Zumar in Iraq's northeast.

(Reporting by Washington Newsroom; Editing by Bill Trott)

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World War II is the deadliest conflict in history.

But the human race still emerged from the war with a few potential advances in hand, among them a cure for syphilis.

The bacteria responsible for the disease was discovered in 1905, and its eventual cure, penicillin, in the late '20s.

But it wasn't until 1943, in the midst of World War II, that doctors at a US Marine Hospital on Staten Island in New York applied the antibiotic to effectively cure four patients suffering from the early stages of the disease.

That October, TIME ran an article about the experiments with the headline "New Magic Bullet," and the next year the doctors published a study on the effectiveness of penicillin injections administered every few hours for eight days.

The development was especially important given the measurable impact that syphilis and other diseases had on the manpower needed to fuel the war effort.

Nearly five percent of draftees in 1942 had syphilis, according to a medical paper published in the journal Military Medicine and entitled "History of US Military Contributions to the Study of Sexually Transmitted Diseases."

When left untreated, the disease causes genital sores before attacking other parts of the body, including the nervous system, to cause a slew of debilitating symptoms and even eventual death. The military's syphilis problem during a major US combat mobilization prompted the War Department "to embark on a massive educational and prophylactic campaign."

Contemporary posters warned that "You can't beat the Axis if you get VD," and that venereal disease makes "a sorry ending to a furlough."

Manpower suffered during World War I from exactly this problem. American soldiers weren't supplied with condoms (something which would change in the next world war), and sexually transmitted diseases as a whole "were the second most common reason for disability and absence from duty, being responsible for nearly 7 million lost person-days and the discharge of more than 10,000 men," according to an article in the Journal of Military and Veterans' Health.

Shortly before that war, syphilis — which first got its name in an Italian poem from the year 1530 — was treated with a medical form of an arsenic compound. Its creator, a German chemist named Paul Ehrlich, won the Nobel Prize in 1908 for his discovery and the drug's effectiveness in the Great War was noted by a medical officer in the United Kingdom's Royal Army Medical Corps.

Still, arsenic was a toxic substance that produced adverse side effects — and it was sometimes used in combination with mercury, which is also poisonous. Penicillin was much easier for the human body to take and the discovery of its effectiveness against syphilis had positive effects that outlasted the second World War.

The disease was "the fourth leading cause of death in the United States before World War II, behind only tuberculosis, pneumonia, and cancer," according to the article in the Journal of Military and Veterans' Health. 

In 1939, 64,000 Americans died from the disease, almost as many as died from diabetes in a recent year. Today, the rate of annual infection is round 13,000 cases for which a cure is available.

The disease has also faded in the American military. In the early years of the Vietnam War, for instance, syphilis represented only one percent of servicemen's cases of sexual infections (though the total rate of these, mostly due to gonorrhea, was actually greater than during World War II).

In 1999, prevalence in the US military was down to 3 cases per 100,000 individuals, close to the civilian rate of 2.5.

The urgency of the US war effort 70 years ago, alongside decades of advances in publish health, reduced the sting of a once-devastating disease in the military and in American society more generally.

SEE ALSO: Dick Cheney had a much different take on the US and torture in 1992

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The Russian economy has been through a lot.

Over the last year, Western sanctions and crashing oil prices bruised the Russian economy.

And this week was particularly bad. In an attempt to stabilize the ruble and inflation, the central bank raised rates up to 17%. Instead, the ruble plummeted to new lows reaching as low as 80 rubles to the dollar on Tuesday.

But this isn't the first time Russia's seen economic problems.

Over the last 150 years, the Russian economy experienced some serious blows in line with political upheavals: the Russian Civil war, WWII under Stalin, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Check out the what's being going on over the last century and a half below (and if you need it bigger, just click on the image.)

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The FBI officially blamed North Korea for the unprecedented Sony hack in a statement on Friday morning.

From the statement:

As a result of our investigation, and in close collaboration with other U.S. Government departments and agencies, the FBI now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions. While the need to protect sensitive sources and methods precludes us from sharing all of this information, our conclusion is based, in part, on the following:

· Technical analysis of the data deletion malware used in this attack revealed links to other malware that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed. For example, there were similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks.

· The FBI also observed significant overlap between the infrastructure used in this attack and other malicious cyber activity the U.S. Government has previously linked directly to North Korea. For example, the FBI discovered that several Internet protocol (IP) addresses associated with known North Korean infrastructure communicated with IP addresses that were hardcoded into the data deletion malware used in this attack.

· Separately, the tools used in the SPE attack have similarities to a cyber attack in March of last year against South Korean banks and media outlets, which was carried out by North Korea.

The FBI's statement follows weeks of rumors and speculation that the rogue state was responsible for targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment in retaliation for Kim Jong-un assassination movie "The Interview," which Sony has agreed not to release in the face of ongoing threats of leaks and further attacks.

The attack was "far more destructive than any seen before on American soil," intelligence officials have concluded, according to The New York Times.

But there's still very much we don't know about the attack, as even the FBI statement acknowledges.

Earlier Friday a US official reported that the North Korean hack may have a Chinese link either through collaboration with Chinese actors or by using Chinese servers to mask the origination of the hack.

US Options

As far as US options in response, there are few immediate options, all of which come with risks. In any case, the best course may be through the Chinese government. 

"The only lever that I can see is China," Dave Aitel, a former NSA research scientist and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Immunity, told Business Insider in an interview. "And what you may see is that it comes out there were some Chinese resources involves in this, and then pressure them to get on board."

One option is sanctions against the North Korean regime. But Pyongyang is already heavily sanctioned and additional measures would complicate relations with China.

"The Obama administration has been reluctant to embrace " the sanctions approach, Associated Press reports. "The biggest impact would be felt by banks in China, complicating US efforts to curry better ties with Beijing."

Another option is cyber retaliation. But that risks escalation.

One proactive move the US should consider, Aitel told Business Insider earlier this week, is "declaring certain cyberattacks terrorist acts and the groups behind them terrorists," which would "set in motion a wider range of legal authority, US government/military resources, and international options." 

In any case, the US will need a new policy when it comes to cyberattacks by state-backed actors.

"This is not something you say 'President Obama solved this tomorrow,'" Aitel said, noting that "deep down the policy engine of the US is very slow, and this case is very complex and has to do with China as well."

If China is involved — as opposed to undefined "Chinese actors"— then pressuring Beijing becomes even more difficult.

China routinely hacks US companies in search of intellectual property such as military technology and "to learn about how a company might approach negotiations with a Chinese company,"according to FBI Director James Comey.

"You have to a cyber policy [and] you have to get the Chinese on board with your policy," Aitel said. "We have to have very clear statement about what lines you cannot cross, and what we're going to do about it."

The attack on Sony, more than three weeks ago, was conducted by hackers calling themselves "Guardians of Peace."

The November hack is the second major attack in which hackers targeted American corporate infrastructure on a large scale with the primary goal of destroying it (as opposed to stealing from it or spying on it). 

Dozens of terabytes of information were taken. Chaos has gripped the entertainment world as hackers dumped information online and news organizations scrambled to cover every possible angle.

Here's a roundup of some of the leaked information:

• A trove of emails from Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel
• Some inappropriate comments about Barack Obama  
• Actors' salaries for "American Hustle"
• Sony executive salaries
• Celebrity's aliases
• Snarky comments from the top about actor-comedian Kevin Hart
• A "21 Jump Street"-"Men In Black" crossover may be in the works
• Disney wants "Spider-Man" for their Marvel Universe
• Sony's troubled relationship with Adam Sandler
• Screener copies of upcoming Sony films have popped up online

President Barack Obama was expected to address the issue at a 1:30 p.m. (13:30 EST) end-of-year news conference. 

Here's the trailer for 'The Interview":

SEE ALSO: Expert: The US Needs To Stop Pretending The Sony Hack Is Anything Less Than An Act Of War

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The Sony hackers have sent another chilling email to top executives at the company.

CNN's Brian Stelter obtained the email. 

In the email, the hackers say Sony made the right decision pulling "The Interview," which portrayed the assassination of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un.

US officials believe the hackers were backed by North Korea. 

Those hackers promised not to leak any more private Sony data unless Sony reverses its decision and distributes the movie anyway.

Here's the email, as read on air by Stelter:

It's very wise that you have made a decision to cancel the release of "The Interview." It will be very useful for you ... We ensure the security of your data unless you make additional trouble.

According to TheWrap, several Sony employees received another message from a person claiming to be the head of the "Guardians of Peace" warning the studio to not release "The Interview" in any form.

Here's the message in full from TheWrap:

“Now we want you never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy.”

“we still have your private and sensitive data” and claims that they will “ensure the security of your data unless you make additional trouble.”

“And we want everything related to the movie, including its trailers, as well as its full version down from any website hosting them immediately.”

Sony decided to pull "The Interview" premiere on Wednesday after five of the top movie-theater chains said they wouldn't show the movie following threats by the hackers, known as Guardians of Peace (GOP).

Sony said it had no plans to release the movie through video on demand or online.

Sony's decision has caused a lot of debate about what kind of precedent it sets when a major corporation bends to the will of hackers or terrorists.

The FBI announced on Friday afternoon that North Korea was involved in the Sony hacks.

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The FBI released a statement on Friday saying that the North Korean government was responsible for the unprecedented Sony breach.

"They caused a lot of damage, and we will respond," President Obama told reporters in an end-of-year news conference.

This malicious intent and apparent state sponsorship have forced the US to respond to the incident as a matter of national security, instead of treating it simply as an instance of cybercrime.

This distinction has opened up a wide variety of responses that the US could conduct against those responsible for the Sony hack. 

Declare North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism. The US is reportedly considering this option.

Evans Revere, a former State Department official and specialist on Korea, has suggested that Pyongyang could be designated a state sponsor of terrorism, joining Sudan, Iran, and Cuba. This designation would be warranted because of the attack and the threat of carrying out violence against theaters that screened "The Interview." 

Risks: North Korea was on the state sponsors of terrorism list until 2008, when it was removed by the Bush administration during nuclear negotiations. Putting it back on would be nothing more than a return to the status quo. 

Declare the hackers terrorists.

According to Dave Aitel, a former NSA research scientist and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Immunity, one option is "declaring certain cyberattacks terrorist acts and the groups behind them terrorists," which would "set in motion a wider range of legal authority, US government/military resources, and international options."

This designation would "set in motion a wider range of legal authority, US government/military resources, and international options."

Risks: Designating North Korea a terrorist sponsor could hamper any future nuclear negotiations with Pyongyang (the US removed the country from the state sponsors of terror list in 2008 to make headway on the nuclear issue). The label would also be precedent-setting and raise all sorts of incredibly thorny legal, diplomatic, and practical questions.

Would China and Russia be labeled state supporters of cyberterror for their distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against American companies and sabotage of US government systems? And what would this designation even mean in practicality — which people or entities would be affected, and how might an expanded legal regime complicate other US economic and political interests? For starters, sanctioning cyberterrorists or companies that assist them could conceivably complicate some US firms' business dealings in China.

Engage in counterhacks.

If it is conclusively proved that North Korea carried out the attacks against the Sony, the US could engage in retaliatory hacks against Pyongyang. This hacking could target North Korean and a variety of North Korean websites, affiliated sites, or internal networks. The US could take North Korean government infrastructure offline as a warning of the potential consequences of a future hack.

Risks: Any cyber engagement against North Korea runs the risk of escalating a conflict into a full-blown cyberwar between the two nations — and the US wouldn't have much to gain from it, considering the deep asymmetry in the wealth and development of each country. "You can turn out the lights in Pyongyang, and they could turn out the lights in New York. Who loses more? There's no way for us to win a trade," Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained to Reuters.

If North Korea feels it is under attack, it could physically respond with kinetic strikes against South Korea. 

Go after Chongryon.

The organization for Japan-based supporters of the North Korean regime once ran a miniature business empire in the country and served as Pyongyang’s chief means of acquiring foreign currency.

Chongryon has fallen on hard times, and been forced to sell off much of its business holdings and property. But the group answers directly to the Liaison Department of the North Korean government. And according to an HP Security report from August 2014 on North Korean cyber capabilities Chongryon's "'study group' ... gathers intelligence for North Korea and helps the regime procure advanced technologies.” The report concluded that Chongryon is “critical to North Korea’s cyber and intelligence program.”

The US could pressure the Japanese government to shut down and expel the organization.

Risks: Japan has been negotiating with North Korea over the fate of nearly a dozen Japanese citizens kidnapped and taken to North Korea over the past 40 years. Sony is a Japanese company, but Japan may bristle at what could be perceived as American intrusion into its foreign and domestic affairs.

Expand sanctions.

The US has the ability to place particularly crippling sanctions upon North Korea. Gordon G. Chang of the Daily Beast notes that financial sanctions put in place under the Bush regime forced Pyongyang to ferry cash in suitcases. This lack of funding led to the closure of certain North Korean weapons programs.

Reuters notes that the US sanctions "only 41 companies and entities and 22 individuals" relating to North Korea for their involvement with the country's nuclear program. The US could designate additional people and entities for their connections to North Korea's hacking program, as well as its telecommunications and internet infrastructure.

Risks: High-level sanctions on North Korea could lead to more difficult relations with China. The previous round of sanctions were prematurely lifted at Beijing's desire. And North Korea is tightly sanctioned as it is.

"The Obama administration has been reluctant to embrace" the sanctions approach, AP reports. "The biggest impact would be felt by banks in China, complicating US efforts to curry better ties with Beijing." 

And North Korea is already one of the most sanctioned governments in history. "We've already got every sanction known to man against them," Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters.

Totally end trade.

The US and North Korea conducted $21.9 million in trade last year, the highest total since 2008. This is a small amount of money, but every bit of external trade is critical in a place as isolated as North Korea, where the elite depends on a steady supply of foreign currency to remain in charge.

Risks: None, really. It’s just too little money to make much of a difference.

End even the possibility of expanding food or development aid.

The US cut off much of its food aid to North Korea in 2008. Since then, there have been intermittent discussions about possibly resorting US development projects and humanitarian assistance. The US could freeze those and communicate an intent not to resume them.

Risks: This would effectively punish ordinary North Koreans for the actions of their government. And it probably wouldn’t do much: The country experienced a debilitating famine in the 1990s, and the Kim regime was still able to hang on to power.

Try to run the North Korean government off of the internet.

As the HP report notes, most North Korean websites are hosted on servers in Japan and Thailand; the only internet service provider inside North Korea is a Thai joint venture. Through a combination of cyber activity and diplomacy, the US could probably blacklist North Korean domains from foreign servers. The US Department of the Treasury could sanction any company involved in hosting North Korean websites or providing internet access to the country's government.

Risks: This wouldn’t have much impact. It’s not as if the Korean Central News Agency is a traffic monster.

Nothing.

The US could treat the Sony breach as an attack on a single private company rather than on the US writ large. Even now, the attack doesn't fit NATO's definition of an act of cyberwar since there has been no loss of life or physical damage resulting from it. Even with state backing, the hack wasn't aimed at hospitals, the military, or the electrical grid. "The Interview" isn't vital infrastructure.

By not acting, the US may have less of a chance of blundering into a larger cyber escalation and wouldn't have to deal with the possible myriad consequences of shifting its entire legal and diplomatic framework in response to a single incident.

Risks: By doing nothing, the US government would be saying that it doesn't feel obligated to respond to even a highly damaging state-backed attack on an entity in the US. This may embolden future attackers. And it would fail to address any of the alarming issues that the Sony hack raises.

Diplomacy.

"There should at least be firm diplomatic repercussions for these types of attacks," Aitel told Business Insider. "After all, what would we have done if they’d blown up the buildings at Sony Pictures but not caused any casualties? That is the context these attacks need to be put in." 

Risks: Nothing happens.

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