Sony Pictures Data Breach Worse Than Expected
posted Sunday Dec 7, 2014 by Nicholas DiMeo
Last week, Sony Pictures had their servers attacked again, with hacker group Guardians of Peace walking away with other 100 terabytes of data. While the 40 GB sample that GOP released contained an large amount of highly-sensitive information, including unreleased movies and scripts, the entire backlog of data was released shortly after and its contents are remarkable.
On the surface it didn't seem like the end of the world. Sure there were Outlook .pst files, internal financial reports and passwords to the payroll, FTP and security services for many countries, but the release of the entire package makes this go from bad to worse. In its entirety, the data grabbed also holds background checks, salary consideration letters, doctors' letters, other medical records and social security numbers. It would appear the simple days of taking usernames and passwords of customers are over.
With the nature of the attack so severe, there is a lot of speculation as to who is actually behind all of this. Rumors floated around that it could've been internal or that North Korea could somehow be involved, but now investigators might have gotten closer to the source. New information has come in that has led officials to believe the Sony Pictures data breach originated from a room at the St. Regis, a five-star hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. Further, the individuals responsible are said to be tied with DarkSeoul, a hacker group based out of North Korea. It is unknown at this time whether or not this was carried out from a common area or a guest room, but web traffic logs point to St. Regis' Wi-Fi.
Could James Franco and Seth Rogen have really caused this level of outrage within North Korea, to the point where the country hired cyber assassins to take out Sony? So far North Korea has publicly denied all allegations but called the act a "righteous deed" and that it may have been done by "supporters and sympathizers (sic)" of the country.
