Slashdot Mirror
Sony Employees Receive Email Threat From Hackers: 'Your Family Will Be In Danger
MojoKid writes: Things are going from bad to worse when it comes to the recent Sony Pictures Entertainment breach. Not only has sensitive financial information been released — including the salaries of high-ranking Sony executives — but more damaging personal information including 47,000 Social Security numbers of employees and actors have been leaked to the internet. We're now learning some even more disturbing details, unfortunately. Guardians of Peace (GOP), the hackers claiming responsibility for infiltrating Sony's computer network, are now threatening to harm the families of Sony employees. GOP reportedly sent Sony employees an email, which just so happened to be riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, that read in part, "your family will be in danger."
Guardians of Peace (GOP) [...] are now threatening to harm the families of Sony employees.
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
In soviet Russia, Sony threatens you!
What is their motivation against Sony Pictures? Those "hackers" seem like monsters who just want to see Sony burn. What a bunch of soulless dickheads.
I'm really disappointed that this sensationalist crap is considered news. I would completely ignore these, as with most anonymous clowns who are trying to tie together the feeble threads of corporate responsibility to physical violence. It doesn't happen and there is no credible danger. Quit giving these nutjobs a platform.
How about you create some sort of legal framework where security researchers, from large companies or individuals, can get authorised to pen test whatever they feel like and report their findings without fear of prosecution? Maybe then the Internet will be safer, because the targets might have to actually fix their shit instead of yelling "hacker" while still keeping their heads up their asses.
I realize that Sony has done some extremely dickish things, And they should have learned, as a company, about the importance of security after the PSN debacle. But even so, this is asinine behavior on the part of whoever is making these threats.
ethics in game journalism.
So now we get to see how powerful the FBI and Japanese equivalent are at actually tracking down cyber criminals.
I would be seriously tempted to both lobby for and bankroll offensive cyber-operations against North Korea. (Lobby for ones on the public dime from every country where SONY has a sizeable presence; bankroll one from some country where it's legal.)
Whether through cyberoperations or plain old believable threats, SONY has to come up with a way to show North Korea (or perhaps independent actors in North Korea) that there's a penalty for this kind of behavior. So does the developed world generally--attacks like this cost a fortune in productivity and potentially lost jobs, and reputation. SONY is in a better position to recover than many businesses (notably in the financial or legal sectors, where the loss of trust could be fatal), but even so.
Apparently the GOP can't even keep its own web site from getting hacked. I go to GOP.com and I get a U.S. right-wingnut political party. So will this hoodie become an anti-Sony statement the way plush Snowden the Snowman toys became an anti-NSA statement?
Given the melodrama and adolescent posturing I'd be more inclined to believe it's a bunch of teenage bootleggers looking to coerce Sony into dropping a legal action against them than a group with any real political agenda.
The issue is that the SSN is used for identification. In Belgium we also have a national number. Pretty easy. in Dutch yet this only links to you and does not identify you as such.
Everybody above 12 needs to have an ID. Checking vadility is free and the chip on it is opensource
Oh and if you are a financial company, you can do verification at the national bank where you can check if you are allowed to give people a credit or not and add that you gave people a credit.
With just the number, you can do nothing. You would at least have the (valid) ID card as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Was there a demand? The abstract doesn't say.
The truth about Islam is too painful to be public knowledge.
No, in the US of A, Sony threatens you...
What a shame project starfish turned out to be harder to control than expected because NK really deserve to have the pug permanently pulled on them for that sort of terrorism.
Who cares, certainly not Sony nor investors, their stock is at a 2 years high and keeps going up.
11 PM? How many use PM?
It's? - How many non-natives use that?
Your? - How many get that right?
It's your false if you think this crisis will be over after some time. - This is perfect except for the "false" bit. How many get that right (and false wrong)?
The rest reads more like a purposeful mash of language, but not bad in the right places, and all too much right. These are not NORKs. These are very likely home-grown baddies. That's U.S. of A. for those from the outer reaches.
C'mon, man, grow a pair and get over it! This is the Internet. Everybody gets death threats! Big deal. If you can't handle the heat, go play with your Barbie dolls.
Isn't that pretty much what everyone on Slashdot was saying about this sort of thing a few weeks ago?
Hackers using Google translate?
It's Sony's fault, they chose to store things the way they did in this day and age, fuck em.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
GoP are good. They have to be. The level of pwnage achieved is simply far beyond anything script kiddies could pull of. Not just the scale of the breach in total data, but in variety. Email, employee records, media from production - data from several divisions, and they even leaked it out through computers that host Playstation infrastructure, a completly different part of the organisation. Whoever GoP are, they have a very high level of skill.
This group then sends some idiotic threats, badly written at that, to low-level employees? I believe I detect the faint smell of fish. It just seems out of character.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone at Sony were responsible for sending this email as a false-flag operation. This would achieve two things they must be much desiring of right now. First, it casts GoP in a bad light - makes sure they are seen by the rest of the world as violent thugs and criminals, rather than being venerated as grassroots hackers who defeated a loathed mega-corporation. Secondly, a threat of physical harm brings a lot more attention from law enforcement - the FBI will devote more resources to aiding in the investigation, as will the corresponding law enforcement agencies in other countries.
Am I alone in seeing the headline about threats from GOP, and thinking that the Tea Party is getting damn aggressive these days?
#o#
O Moo.
They messed with Sly's SS#, fools.
You assume too much. It's entirely possible it wasn't done via the Internet, right?
They'll be caught and scalped in a new blockbuster already in the works.
Believe me, and yes, with them in charge all of our families' are in danger.
'Guardians of Peace' (sic) will be sharing the same prison cell as 'Lizard Squad' while having to adjust to two major lifestyle changes; prison food, and the danger from behind whenever they drop the soap in those showers.
I keep hearing that this group is in North Korea. If they are, then this is basically state action, not a bunch of "hackers" as used normally.
like "you're family will being in danger"
Sony staff - or at least the ones I've met - are required to use Sony equipment left, right and centre. So their family members have been at risk of harm from the use of Sony equipment for years in the past, and will remain at risk for years in the future. Until several years after the final demise of Sony Corporation.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Yeah I agree. Everything which has been reported about this hack seems to keep pointing to a concerted effort in misinformation. I really dont understand why the comment above about this being the work of North Korea as if it is fact? What. Changing the compiling workstations language is pretty easy way to create easy media headlines. Why do terrorist organisations and governments get the finger pointed at them first? Corporations have the most to gain.
"All your family belong us" grammatical errors?
Readers might also want to check, IF any of your Sony accounts like PSN (yet again) have been hacked from data stolen in the 100TB of data said (on slashdot) to have been lost.
Could we put it past Sony to fake such a letter so as to, say, prompt some additional action on the part of law enforcement or even to try and preempt war on someone or something?
(Not saying this is the case, merely speculating at the possibility of the injured party disseminating, for lack of a better word - "propaganda" - to try and garner sympathy from regular people because OH NO H4CK3R5 R BAAAAAAAAAD).
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