A hand-picked group of say 5 kids from within NK, given special training for years and access to lots of resources could easily pull off what happened at Sony. None of your points are things that would stop a small special ops team from pulling off the Sony hack. Nor would it have required a significant reason or investment.
Simply because the alternative is that a small group of semi-sophisticated non-state backed hackers could also pull if off. To say that NK can't acquire or won't utilize similar capabilities is a bit naive.
What we need is evidence that it wasn't NK than even more endless conjecture here.
See also "In North Korea, Hackers Are a Handpicked, Pampered Elite"
Nah, I just don't see a country that isolated and impoverished having the resources and talent necessary to do any major damage through hacking. They may very well claim to have l33t hax0rz but just like everything else their claimed superiority and reality don't quite line up.
Now, I would not be surprised if they had help from China, but I really doubt NK did this themselves.
Simply because the alternative is that a small group of semi-sophisticated non-state backed hackers could also pull if off. To say that NK can't acquire or won't utilize similar capabilities is a bit naive.
What we need is evidence that it wasn't NK than even more endless conjecture here.
See also "In North Korea, Hackers Are a Handpicked, Pampered Elite"
http://recode.net/2014/12/07/in-north-korea-hackers-are-a-ha...