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The Sony Hack
The Sony Hack: who did it?
The Sony Pictures Entertainment cyber hack was a release of confidential data belonging to Sony Pictures Entertainment on November 24, 2014.At Sony Pictures Entertainment’s headquarters in Culver City, a typical week begins. The first sign of a digital break-in comes early that morning, when the image of a stylised skull with long skeletal fingers flashes on every employee’s computer screen at the same time, accompanied by a threatening message warning that “This is just the beginning.” The hackers say “we've obtained all your internal data,” and warn that if Sony doesn't “obey” their demands, they will release the company’s “top secrets.”States intelligence officials, evaluating the software, techniques, and network sources used in the hack, allege that the attack was sponsored by North Korea. North Korea has denied all responsibility, and some cyber security experts have cast doubt on the evidence, alternatively proposing that current or former Sony Pictures employees may have been involved in the hack.
The data included personal information about Sony Pictures employees and their families, e-mails between employees, information about executive salaries at the company, copies of unreleased Sony films, and other information.
The hackers called themselves the "Guardians of Peace" or "GOP" and demanded the cancellation of the planned release of the film The Interview, a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
North Korea, at the centre of a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of Sony pictures, itself experienced Internet outages on 22 December 2014, Monday, a U.S. company that monitors Internet infrastructure said.It's not clear if the Internet connectivity problems were an act of retribution for a major intrusion at Sony Pictures Entertainment that the FBI linked to North Korea.
Washington requested China's help, asking Beijing to shut down servers and routers used by North Korea that run through Chinese networks, senior administration officials told Reuters. But China had not responded directly to the U.S. requests, the officials added.
In Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that it opposed all forms of cyber attacks and that there was no proof that North Korea was responsible for the Sony hacking.
China is North Korea's only major ally and would be central to any U.S. efforts to crack down on the isolated state. But the United States has also accused China of cyber spying in the past and a U.S. official has said the attack on Sony could have used Chinese servers to mask its origin.
Several U.S. officials said that the FBI, which has taken the lead inside the government in investigating the Sony hack, had help from other agencies, including spy agencies, among them the secretive National Security Agency.
The NSA's cyber security and cyber spying capabilities are the most formidable of any U.S. agency, but it has been under criticism since former contractor Edward Snowden disclosed secrets of the agency’s surveillance mechanisms in 2013.
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