Comment Re:I'd be curious about the consequences. (Score 2) 85
A nation literally cannot attack a multi-national company in the way these attacks have happened. That's because these attacks now include physical threats against the citizens of other nation states. Those threats make no sense coming from a nation state, and just about have to be from some third party if North Korea is involved in even the 'cyber' part of the attacks. That's because the nation doesn't want to find itself in a war with other nation states and not just the corporation, or to get boxed in by making a threat they don't intend to follow through on and lose face. Bluffs are for when you are already desperately losing, not beginning.
Do you really think North Korea could follow up on those death threats by actually attacking those people, perhaps claiming they were legitimate targets as Sony employees and not being killed as citizens of the US, Japan, or other states, and that those states should also ignore any other deaths that resulted as merely collateral damage? Assasinate a few thousand citizens and any witnesses, family members, and first responders and such that get involved, and act like their citizenship doesn't matter? The bodies that deal with such things are not elected, they are called by such names as carrier strike forces and joint combat arms taskforces.
If the Korean government did pay for hacking teams, and sticks to just cyber-attacks, there's still some risk if they hit promiscuous targets or affect the various stock markets enough, but any involvement by governments would depend on whether Sony or Wall Street or whatever even asks them to become involved. For such non-lethal attacks, sanctions would probably begin with a UN resolution and individual states agreeing to participate in further economic restraints as they saw fit once that resolution passes. Sony would have to lobby various governments to support the UN sanctions if they can get more declared, and this gets to such things as taking out ads in many of those countries reminding their citzens that Sony is not just a Japanese company, and such preliminaries, before anything much else is done.
If UN lobbying efforts fail (unlikely if there's any real evidence NK is involved), Sony would probably still lobby individual nations to act, but Sony can also go ahead with asking some individual governments to help with proving for certain just where the attacks are coming from, and not have to rally the UN there, so that's the one step they are doubtless already taking.
Sony is actually allowed less independence in even trying to gather evidence that it was really North Korea than North Korea is in initiating such non-physical attacks, and in theory, Sony is the side that would have to be very careful not to have any malicious code spread to other parties and such, while a nation has more rights. In practice, theory goes out the window if the right US senators are taking a hit because of the Sony stock in their retirement portfolios.