Security firm disputes the FBI’s claim that North Korea hacked Sony

This has all taken place with North Korea, which Sony suspected was involved from the start, in the background. Those suspicions were confirmed when the FBI released a statement saying it had “enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions,” an assertion that was confirmed by President Obama during his yearly end-of-year press conference. But the FBI was not the only organization investigating the hack, and now the security research firm Norse Corp. says that it believes that the Sony hack was actually an inside job, with at least one former Sony employee helping orchestrate the devastating cyber attack with what Bloomberg describes as “hacktivists.” Norse has reportedly narrowed its search down to six individuals in the U.S., Canada, Singapore, and Thailand.

That doesn‘t necessarily mean that that former employee or employees wasn’t working on behalf of or in tandem with the North Korean government, and, at least for the time being, the FBI is sticking by its assertion. And the executive branch is sticking with the FBI, with a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council saying, “The administration stands by the FBI assessment.” But, much to the delight of our more conspiratorially minded Facebook friends, the FBI has been briefed on the new theory, and there’s still more to come in quite possibly the most complicated ongoing international conspiracy Seth Rogen and James Franco have ever been involved in.