Sony was attacked this time last week by a group calling itself the
Guardians of Peace, which brought the company’s internal website to a
halt and captured information including confidential emails and other
data. It threatened to release the data if certain unspecified demands
weren’t met; and it appears that they weren’t, as employee passwords,
personal data, copies of passports and other information have all since
appeared online.
It’s been suggested that the hack may be linked to the upcoming
Christmas day release of The Interview, a comedy centered around a
chat-show host who lands an interview with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and
is then tasked with assassinating him by the CIA. North Korea’s UN
ambassador Ja Song Nam has described the movie as “the most undisguised
sponsoring of terrorism as well as an act of war”.
While it’s definitely premature to be attributing the hack to any
particular motive this early in the proceedings, it’s perhaps
significant that the hackers haven’t chosen to leak The Interview along
with the rest. This could suit the North Korean government, as the last
thing it wants is for people to see the movie.
But the attribution of the hack to North Korea does represent
something of a silver lining for Sony. It looks slightly less careless
to fall vulnerable to a hack from a government rather than a group of
individuals, for a start – and it also makes for great publicity for the
movie.
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