WHITFIELD: The United States is hitting North Korea with a new set of economic sanctions after determining Kim Jong-Un's regime was behind last month's computer hack at Sony. CNN's Will Ripley is in our Beijing newsroom with an update -- Will.</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're still working to get an official response to North Korea to this latest round of White House sanctions that are in direct response to the hacks on Sony that North Korea has denied. But the White House says they are confident that North Korea orchestrated despite some skepticism by private cybersecurity experts. U.S. law enforcement believes that North Korea was behind the cyberattack on Sony, which is why we are now seeing the U.S. government, the Treasury, specifically, targeting three different North Korean entities and ten individuals linked to those entities. Now, the North Korean organizations include their intelligence organization, their primary arms dealer, and their defense research and development entity. Now, what may hurt the most for North Korea, certainly, financially, is the targeting of the primary arms dealer and seven people who were believed to be using arms dealing trade. North Korea makes a lot of its money by exporting weapons and these are people who are operating in places like Africa, Iran, Russia and Syria. Because the U.S. government is now naming these individuals publicly for the first time, it makes them much more public. It makes it much more difficult for people to do business with them. Certainly, for anybody who has a stake with what the United States has to say about it. But what this also does, perhaps more importantly, to the Obama administration is it sends a message that this kind of cyberattack will not be tolerated. When the U.S. government decided to publicly blame North Korea for this, a lot of people around the world were wondering what recourse the United States government has. Now, you see at least the first response from the White House that any cyberattack against U.S. corporations or others around the world will be met with consequences. Will Ripley, CNN, Beijing.</s>WHITFIELD: We have much more straight ahead in the NEWSROOM and it all starts right now.
United States Sanctions North Korea Over Sony Hack