Sony Hack Sends Effective Warning to Other Hollywood Film Studios from North Korea
This hack of Sony by likely North Korean hackers is actually turning out to be a very effective way for the North Koreans to influence how Hollywood tries to depict their country in future films. The Kim regime has clearly had enough of being the stereotypical bad guys for various Hollywood films and the leak of these internal Sony emails is proving to be highly embarrassing and could lead to legal action against the company for many years to come:
The hits on Sony keep coming.
As journalists pore over hundreds of thousands of internal Sony emails the hacker group calling itself Guardians of Peace starting releasing on Nov. 24, more sensitive information continues to be uncovered, including revelations published on Friday by The Daily Beast, Re/code, Gawker, and The Verge.
To date, the hackers have released Sony executives’ salaries, top-secret profitability data, employees’ Social Security numbers, embarrassing emails and at least five films and opened up legal risks for years to come. The most revealing information leaked so far has come from the email exchanges between studio execs and Hollywood’s elite. Here are 10 of the latest developments. [Yahoo Movies]
You can read more at the link, but surely any Hollywood film company is going to think twice about making North Korea the stereotypical bad guys for their films after this cyberattack against Sony.
How about it serving as a warning to all companies to take more care in the security of your crown jewels. If you’ve got hundreds of millions of dollars invested in data that can lose much of its value if released prematurely, don’t make it accessible from the internet. Provide secure, internal LANs for the few people who will need to view or work on it.
How about it also serve as a lesson to everyone — don’t say or post anything in your official and professional communications about anyone that you are not willing to say to their faces.
For whatever reason, many things that should be on private networks somehow end up connected to the internet. Probably for easier remote management, but the results can be nasty.
What’s scary is critical infrastructure that is vulnerable to attack. Power stations, water filtration plants and the like that could be manipulated from afar.
Even if completely disconnected from the internet, there’s still the risk of insider threat, whether intentionally or from unknowingly plugging in an infected flash drive.
The BadUSB vulnerability doesn’t just install malicious software on a flash drive. It actually allows the firmware to be reprogrammed for whatever purpose the attacker wants. All the while, it isn’t picked up by antivirus/antimalware software.
If the business of making a film all took place in one location, it would be feasible to do everything on an internal LAN. But most film productions are international endeavors.
i don’t think the hackers are from North Korea. They promised a Christmas present hack. North Koreans don’t openly celebrate Christmas.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/14/technology/security/sony-pictures-hack/