Sony Pictures Computer Sytems Shut Down After Ransomware Hack

MojoKid writes: It appears that Sony Pictures has become the victim of a massive ransomware hack, which has resulted in the company basically shutting down its IT infrastructure. According to an unnamed source, every computer in Sony's New York Office, and every Sony Pictures office across the nation, bears an image from the hacker with the headline "Hacked By #GOP" which is then followed by a warning. The hacker, or group, claims to have obtained corporate secrets and has threatened to reveal those secrets if Sony doesn't meet their demands.

Comments

Re:would prefer EA, Comcast, or Haliburton myself

[v1]

Seriously, what important, secret information does a film studio have, besides salary, and royalty numbers?

Embarassing "creative accounting", heavier than expected use of offshore tax shelters and chip-shuffling, two sets of books, other illegal accounting, illegal campaign contributions, those are a lot more likely than the sort of "secrets" you're thinking of. They probably stand a lot more to lose there than from theft of R&D files.

Nowadays your accounting department needs to be the most heavily defended portion of your network, and not due to direct theft. (unless you're in the business of mining bitcoins anyway)