North Korea Cited As Responsible For Sony Hack, Retaliation For The Interview
In a rather comedic turn of events, it’s now coming to light that North Korea may be behind the recent hack on Sony Pictures in retaliation of the comedy “The Interview” which features a plotline revolving around an attempt to assassinate Kim Jong-Un. The film, set to be released on Christmas Day in the United States stars Seth Rogen and James Franco.
North Korea had been calling the film an “act of war” in a June 27th complaint to the United Nations. In the complaint they cited that the film endorsed terrorism, and asked the UN to block the release of the film otherwise it would be sponsoring terrorism. According to the Hollywood Reporter, a government website also threatened the filmmakers with “stern punishment.”
Details of the recent hack on Sony Pictures’ company network appears to be very widespread and more damaging than first reported. It has come to light that almost 25 gigabytes worth of sensitive data has been leaked on public torrent sites containing information on tens of thousands of Sony employees – including social security numbers, medical insurance data, and salary information.
Another file making the rounds is apparently an Excel file containing employee names, locations, social security numbers, employee ID, network username, base salary, and date of birth. It’s reported that there are 6800 individuals on this particular list.
The attack and malware has also apparently destroyed data on an unverified number of internal systems.
The FBI has released a document warning businesses of a very malicious malware making the rounds that is aimed at destroying and overwriting data on hard drives, rendering computers useless and destroying archival boot information. Although unconfirmed, this warning seems to be connected to the Sony hack.
It is also being reported by website re/code that Sony will officially name North Korea as the origin of this attack. The company has hired FireEye division Mandiant security in order to help them proceed with cleaning up the mess.
Sony will not alter plans to release The Interview, and all the additional publicity will actually serve to boost the film’s revenue. Some comedians at Reddit are even joking that it could be the biggest publicity stunt ever conceived.
