A disgruntled employee could be responsible for the Sony hack attack that ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the movie "The Interview," computer security expert Vinny Troia told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
Troia said threats issued by hackers surrounding the release of the movie could be a diversion to distract authorities away from the real perpetrator. Sony canceled the movie's scheduled Christmas Day release over the threat of attacks on theaters that showed the comedy depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
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"I think that in the event that this turns out to be either a disgruntled employee or an inside job, there is so much attention around this right now, they need to point the finger at somebody else," Troia said Friday.
Troia, who also works as an ethical hacker and computer forensic investigator, said it was the amount of information about the company that hackers released that led him to speculate North Korea was not behind the computer hacking.
Company emails, financial records, and password keys exposed from the hacking made it "almost impossible for this to occur completely from the outside," Troia explained, adding that "somebody knew exactly what to get and where to get it."
If North Korea wasn't to blame, whoever was responsible for the attack was looking for the "best possible scapegoat," he said. Since some had "suspected North Korea from the beginning," he said it made them an easy target.
There was only one "remote shred of evidence" that indicated the malware used in the Sony attack "was calling back to an IP address in North Korea," coding that could have already been in the computer script, he said.
The hack attack should be a warning to companies to address vulnerabilities in their computer systems, Troia said, because many believed "this isn't going to happen to me, and I can put it off."
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