Sony’s digital disaster won’t be the last

THE latest chapter in global cyber warfare, the assault on major Hollywood studio Sony Pictures, has also been one of the most incredible.

Governments have launched attacks on each other before; the United States and Israel, for instance, are widely suspected of developing a computer worm that destroyed part of Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.

Shadowy activists, such as the group Anonymous, have repeatedly attacked the websites of such targets such as churches, government agencies and corporations, all with plenty of fanfare.

And this is not just an international phenomenon. In New Zealand last year, a hacker calling himself Rawshark released the private emails of the blogger WhaleOil – the basis for the book Dirty Politics and a mud-wrestle of an election campaign.

Yet for tortuous and public, it is hard to beat the Sony hacking, which has been bleeding the company slowly for a month now. Gossipy emails between senior Hollywood figures have spilled out, as well as embarrassing pay gaps between male and female stars and copies of upcoming Sony films. A group calling itself Guardians of Peace is behind the hack. They appear very likely to be a front for agents of the North Korean government.

There is certainly the motive: Sony’s latest film, The Interview, a comedy of sorts, depicts the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The hacking has started a hurricane: a panicked Sony cancelled the screenings, then changed its mind, then released the movie online; North Korea’s limited internet went black, quite possibly under attack from the US; Presidents Barack Obama and Kim Jong Un threatened each other with further retaliations. It’s possible to be amused by the hammy style of the whole saga – not least the picture of incandescent dictatorial rage that seems to lie behind it.

Yet there are more serious aspects to this. Kim’s anger may indeed have helped motivate the attack, but it also suits North Korea to appear erratic and volatile, ever ready to act dangerously.

The country has nuclear weapons. Threatening it will always involve some risk without great upside, and thus the threats are seldom taken far. This may all be part of the regime’s ugly calculus.

The hacking also shows up the fragile state of information in the digital age. A major corporation’s secrets can be gathered up in one swift heist. Governments, which hold so much and varied personal data, will be increasingly under the same threat.

In more material ways, too, they are vulnerable. The US fears escalating its North Korea stoush because so much of its own infrastructure is in harm’s way – power stations, telecommunications networks and the like.

In a sense, all this mirrors the anxieties many people feel about the security of their personal information – their credit card details floating in cyberspace, their email trails sluicing through vast spy databases.

All the digital players, huge and tiny, are feeling their way in the dark. This will settle eventually, one way or another: with more robust security, or a less anarchic internet, or even less written communication. But there will probably be more spectacular scandals before that happens.