Sony Pictures hacked nationwide

[dlevere]

Rough start of the week for Sony IT, as it is being reported that every computer all over Sony Pictures has been hacked and the screen has been replaced by the following image:



The #GOP stands for Guardians of Peace.

There are zip files as shown by the screenshot, here is currently a discussion on Reddit where they are analyzing and breaking down the contents of these files.

[dlevere]

Sony Thinks North Korea Could Be Linked To A Cyber Attack Just Weeks Before 'The Interview' Hits Theaters

Reporting by Ron Grover, Michelle Nichols and Jim Finkle; Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Frances Kerry


An entrance gate to Sony Pictures Entertainment at the Sony Pictures lot is pictured in Culver City, CA

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sony Pictures Entertainment is investigating to determine if hackers working on behalf of North Korea might be responsible for a cyber attack that knocked out the studio's computer network earlier this week, the technology news site Re/code reported.

The attack occurred a month before Sony Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp, is to release "The Interview." The movie is a comedy about two journalists who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The Pyongyang government denounced the film as "undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war" in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.

Representatives of the North Korean mission to the United Nations could not immediately be reached for comment on Saturday.

Sony Pictures' computer system went down on Monday. Before screens went dark, they displayed a red skull and the phrase "Hacked By #GOP," which reportedly stands for Guardians of Peace, the Los Angeles Times said.

The hackers also warned they would release "secrets" stolen from the Sony servers, the Times reported.

Re/code said in a report late Friday that Sony and security consultants were investigating the possibility that someone acting on behalf of North Korea, possibly from China, was responsible. Re/code said a link to North Korea had not been confirmed but it had not been ruled out.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Sony Pictures was investigating every possibility, adding no link to North Korea has been uncovered.

Sony acknowledged the computer outage in a statement on Tuesday. Emails to Sony were bouncing back on Saturday with a message asking senders to contact employees by telephone because its email system was "experiencing a disruption."

"The Interview," scheduled for release in the United States on Dec. 25, stars James Franco as the host of a tabloid television show that is enjoyed by Kim, and Seth Rogen as the show's producer. When they are granted a rare interview with Kim, the CIA wants to turn them into assassins.

KCNA, the official news agency in isolationist North Korea, quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman in June as promising a "merciless counter-measure" if the film is released. The government also wrote to U.S. President Barack Obama asking him to stop it, the Voice of America reported.

[dlevere]

Sony Pictures hack leads to 100 TB+ of data stolen including Unreleased movies, scrip

The latest leak that crippled Sony pictures was huge. Gizmodo reports that up to 100 TB+ of data stolen including: Unreleased movies, scripts, medical records, 3,800 SSN's and more was found in the leak. Keep in mind only 40gb was released, the rest of the 60gb still remains to be published, and who knows the damage it will bring.

It’s time to take a moment of silence for Sony Pictures, because more startling revelations about leaked information just came out and employees are starting to panic. BuzzFeed raked through some 40 gigabytes of data and found everything from medical records to unreleased scripts. This is probably the worst corporate hack in history.

We already knew that the Sony Pictures hack was bad, but this is just absurd. BuzzFeed’s discoveries include documents detailing “employee criminal background checks, salary negotiations, and doctors’ letters explaining the medical rationale for leaves of absence.” They also include “the script for an unreleased pilot written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan to the results of sales meetings with local TV executives.” Better call Saul.

Meanwhile, Fusion’s Kevin Roose is reporting on what exactly happened at Sony Pictures when the hack went down. The hack was evidently so extensive that even the company gym had to shut down. And once the hackers started releasing the data, people started “freaking out,” one employee said. That saddest part about all of this is that the very worst is probably still to come. Hackers say they stole 100 terabytes of data in total. If only 40 gigabytes contained all of this damning information, just imagine what 100 terabytes contains.

VIA

Source

[dlevere]

North Korea Behind Sony Hack

Sony cancels 'The Interview' theatrical release

By Mollie Reilly

U.S. officials have determined that hackers working for North Korea are behind the Sony Pictures Entertainment attack, multiple news outlets reported Wednesday.

According to NBC, the hack originated outside of North Korea, but appears to have been carried out by individuals working for the North Korean government.

Sony began working with law enforcement earlier this month following the November breach on the entertainment company's servers by anonymous hackers. The hack resulted in the leak of many sensitive emails and documents, including film scripts. The attack was believed to be in retaliation for the release of "The Interview," a comedy about an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un starring Seth Rogen and James Franco.

While officials told the AP and CNN that an announcement would come in the near future, The New York Times reports that the White House is still weighing how it will respond to the attack:

Senior administration officials, who would not speak on the record about the intelligence findings, said the White House was still debating whether to publicly accuse North Korea of what amounts to a cyber-terrorism campaign.

Officials said it was not clear how the White House would decide to respond to North Korea. Some within the Obama administration argue that the government of Mr. Kim must be directly confronted, but that raises the question of what consequences the administration would threaten — or how much of its evidence it could make public without revealing details of how the United States was able to penetrate North Korean computer networks to trace the source of the hacking.

The FBI, who is leading the investigation into the Sony hack, warned theaters and other businesses associated with the film that they could be targeted by cyber attacks.

Earlier Wednesday, Sony announced it was canceling plans to release the film on Christmas Day after the nation's largest movie theater chains said it would pull the film from their screens due to threats by the hackers invoking 9/11.

"In light of the decision by the majority of our exhibitors not to show the film The Interview, we have decided not to move forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release," the film studio said in a statement. "We respect and understand our partners' decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theater-goers."

A Sony representative later said the company has "no further release plans" for the film.

This is a developing story and has been updated.

[Helder]

It's time the USA got some hackers to do some dirty work instead of Ethical Hackers who stick to the rules, they need to start doling out pay backs instead of having the FBI do shit for months especially when they are in another country.

[dlevere]

In plot reversal, Sony sends 'The Interview' to 200 theaters

By Eric Kelsey and David Brunnstrom


(From left) James Franco & Seth Rogen in 'The Interview'

Sony Pictures will allow "The Interview" to play in more than 200 U.S. theaters as of Christmas Day, reversing its decision to pull the film, after coming under criticism from President Barack Obama and others for caving into pressure from North Korea.

The White House praised Sony's about-face, which the studio said would result in "a limited theatrical release" of the film, which stars Seth Rogen and James Franco and is about a fictional plot to assassinate North Korea leader Kim Jong Un.

"The decision made by Sony and participating theaters allows people to make their own choices about the film, and we welcome that outcome," presidential spokesman Eric Schultz said in a statement.

It was another surprising twist in a saga that started four weeks ago, when a massive cyber attack now blamed on North Korea crippled the Hollywood studio. The hacking has grown into a geopolitical headache and a global symbol of attacks on free expression.

On Friday, Obama had called Sony's decision to pull the $44 million movie a mistake, suggesting it could set a precedent in which "some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States."

Congressional Republicans and Democrats, as well as Hollywood luminaries such as George Clooney, had also assailed the canceled release, with some accusing the studio of self-censorship.

Franco and Rogen, who also co-directed the film, broke their silence after Sony made the announcement.

"The people have spoken! Freedom has prevailed!" Rogen said, while Franco added, "VICTORY!!!!!!! The PEOPLE and THE PRESIDENT have spoken!!!"

Sony Pictures Entertainment Chief Executive Michael Lynton said the studio was looking for more options to screen the film, which major U.S. theater chains pulled because of threats from hackers who warned of a September 11, 2001 style of attack.

Lynton said in Tuesday's statement: "We have never given upon releasing 'The Interview' and we're excited our movie will be in a number of theaters on Christmas Day." He said the studio, a unit of Sony Corp, was trying to secure other platforms and more theaters "so that this movie reaches the largest possible audience."

TICKETS SELL QUICKLY

One of the first signs of a breakthrough for Sony came in a tweet from Tim League, founder of the Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain, saying it planned to show the movie. Tickets sold out for many of the screenings within minutes of being offered online.

Most of the 200 or so theaters are believed to be independent exhibitors and some said they would take some extra security precautions for the first screenings. The major movie chains that had bowed out last week, such as AMC Theaters and Regal Cinemas, had not yet addressed the reversal.

"I think everybody has been doing a certain amount of this on the fly," said Jan Klingelhofer, a film buyer from Oakland, California, who got the movie into at least two theaters.

Legal experts said theater owners, not Sony, would bear the brunt of legal liability in the event of violence at the shows.

In one case that has similar themes, victims of the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, brought a case against the theater owner Cinemark USA. In August, the judge overseeing the case refused to dismiss the lawsuit and allowed it to move forward.

Even so, Eugene Volokh, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said movie theaters would have "a pretty strong defense" in such a case because, although there is a general threat concerning "The Interview," it is not specific or foreseeable.

Theater owners and film buyers told Reuters that Sony shared its plans to have the movie play on video-on-demand (VOD) beginning on Dec. 25. Sony has not confirmed the VOD plan.

As of yet, however, no major U.S. cable or satellite operator has plans to offer the film to their subscribers.

THREAT NOT DEEMED SERIOUS

A national security official said U.S. authorities did not rate the threats by hackers against theatergoers seriously, but it was not yet clear whether U.S. agencies would issue any additional warnings of possible attacks on exhibitors.

North Korea experienced Internet problems during the weekend and a complete outage of nearly nine hours before links were largely restored on Tuesday; U.S. officials said Washington was not involved.

Links were restored at 0146 GMT on Tuesday, but two brief outages occurred later in the day, said U.S.-based Dyn Research, a company that monitors Internet infrastructure.

Matthew Prince, CEO of U.S.-based CloudFlare, which protects websites from web-based attacks, said the fact that North Korea's Internet was back up "is pretty good evidence that the outage wasn't caused by a state-sponsored attack; otherwise it'd likely still be down for the count."

South Korea, which remains technically at war with North Korea, said meanwhile it could not rule out involvement by its neighbor in a cyberattack on its nuclear power plant operator involving non-critical data.

North Korea has denied it was behind the cyberattack on Sony and has vowed to hit back against any U.S. retaliation, threatening the White House and the Pentagon.

Some of the internal emails leaked by the hackers who attacked Sony suggest it is considering a sale of its Sony/ATV Music Publishing unit, the Wall Street Journal reported.

(Additional reporting by Meeyoung Cho and Sohee Kim in Seoul, David Brunnstrom and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Ben Blanchard and Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing, Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore, Liana Baker in New York, Jon Herskowitz in Austin, Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Mary Milliken in Los Angeles; Writing by Christian Plumb; Editing by David Story, Steve Orlofsky and Ken Wills)

[MathUser]

So it was rebel hackers that took out the internet in NK after all eh? I thought it was US for a sec there but I guess it wasn't.

[dlevere]

Sony releases 'The Interview' on YouTube, other Internet channels


A man walks by the poster for the film 'The Interview' outside the Alamo Drafthouse theater in Littleton, Colorado December 23, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking