Sony Pictures Dealt Critical Hit in Massive Data Breach and Outage
posted Sunday Nov 30, 2014 by Nicholas DiMeo
Sony Pictures has yet again been targeted for a data breach. Amidst rumors of Sony Mobile's database being hacked, which turned out to be untrue, Sony Pictures has suffered its second data breach in under two years.
Employees of Sony Pictures logging onto their computers this week were welcomed with the image you see on the right. The Guardians of Peace, or GOP, is taking credit for the attack and has watermarked the image to prove it. Employees were unable to access information on their computers or their email, and after some time, the entire system shut down. For almost an entire day, Sony Pictures were unable to restore their servers and other devices to a working state and instead resorted to landline phones and fax machines.
The image on the computers said this,
Hacked By #GOP
Warning:
We've already warned you, and this is just a beginning.
We continue till our request be met.
We've obtained all your Internal data, Including your secrets and top secrets.
If you don't obey us, we'll release data shown below to the world.
Determine what will you do till November the 24th, 11:00 PM (GMT).
GOP made some demands per the image and displayed links to what data was stolen from Sony. Among that data included usernames and passwords, which appeared to have been stored in Excel files sorted by country. There is also "private key" files titled "Sony - Workday" and "ADP SSH Private Key" in GOP's list. The group also says it has several .zip files that it thinks Sony Pictures wouldn't like out in the wild, like internal financial reports, FTP passwords and Outlook .pst files.
Since then, Sony has done some interesting things. First, the initial response from the company was that it is "investigating an IT matter." Sony has gone on record to say it may take "weeks" until everything is fully restored. Sound familiar? Now, Sony Pictures is investigating whether or not North Korea is behind this attack. While this may sound crazy up front, Sony has caught a lot of flack from the country ahead of the release of The Interview, which stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as journalists who are hired by the CIA to kill Kim Jong-un.
Beyond that, several Sony Pictures titles have been leaked to the web this week, too. Four of them have not been released yet and one of them, Fury, is still shown in movie theaters. While the GOP has not taken credit for this, it does seem a bit coincidental and furthers the damage done to Sony as a whole. Can Sony Pictures rebound from this crucial blow?