First stolen Sony Pictures company data appears online
GOP, a hacker group that claims to be responsible for the large-scale hack at Sony Pictures, has put online a 27GB torrent that allegedly contained company documents. Meanwhile, North Korea does not deny its involvement in the attack.
The hackers previously announced that they would have stolen tens of terabytes of company data from Sony Pictures and would gradually put it online. That seems to have happened with the publication of a torrent file on multiple websites. The torrent contains 27GB of compressed data, which presumably includes corporate documents. The Fusion website claims to have opened a spreadsheet that contains salary data for Sony Pictures staff from the leaked data.
It is now also known that the FBI has been involved in the investigation into the extensive hacking attack. Previously, Sony would have ordered the American security company FireEye to examine the case.
The FBI is warning US companies that they too could fall victim to the suspected malware that appears to have been used by the hackers, Reuters reports. The malware overwrites all data on victims’ hard drives, including the master boot record. This renders the hard drives unusable unless they are manually restored.
Some fingers point to North Korea as a possible culprit for the hack. According to The Wall Street Journal, software previously used by North Korean hackers to attack banks and media companies in South Korea has been found. A spokesman for Kim Jong-un’s regime has refused to deny the country’s involvement in the attack. He responded with the text ‘wait and see’. North Korea previously protested against the Sony film The Interview. This comedy is said to mock Kim Jong-un’s regime. North Korea says it sees the film as an ‘act of war’.
On Monday, screeners of several Sony films still in theaters appeared online. Screeners are versions of films that are sent out to critics, among other things. The leaking of the films, including Fury and Annie, may have something to do with the hack, but that is by no means certain.