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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."
Wanting to see Sony burn is a perfectly legitimate goal, but threatening the safety of average employees and their families is several steps over the line.
So now we get to see how powerful the FBI and Japanese equivalent are at actually tracking down cyber criminals.
They keep it from breaking out.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Are those emails legit or fake? Well what better way to reverse this from a super embarrassment for Sony and corporate world to "them hackers are gonna kill us" and make the hackers look even worse and dangerous. Next we'll see the words Anti Corporate Terrorists used.
>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."
Yah, those bad grammar homicidal hackers.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Yes, because corporate-funded (cyber-)terrorism against a soveriegn nation has *no* potential down sides, right? ( :
Being a "sovereign nation" doesn't make you more powerful. Only power makes you powerful: manpower, materials, and moral strength. North Korea (if they're the aggressors here) has no meaningful way to project military power, and in a purely "cyber" war, a corporation with a larger budget than N Korea has an advantage. OTOH, Sony hasn't had it's shit together since the founder left, and likely can't act effectively in its own defense.
N Korea could be completely shut down here by simply isolating them from the internet, which really isn't that hard unless China decides to defend them.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
True, law enforcement has to take this seriously, but if I received such a threat I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's basic trollish behavior. Hey look at ME! Pay attention to MEEE!
These guys aren't terrorists, or even violent criminals. They aren't even hacktivists. They're script kiddies who want to see their name -- or at least their pseudonym -- in the media.
They're pathetic, but they'll get their fifteen minutes of pseudo-fame because of the almost equally pathetic obsession the media has with the celebrities. Now in my career I have had certain times been privvy to datasets that included confidential information about celebrities. Did I do anything with that information? Did I even *look* at it closely? No, because I'm not miserable little wretch who gets a thrill out of being connected, no matter how, to a celebrity. The barista who pulls my espresso shot is more significant to me than Sylvester Stallone will ever be, and if I ever threaten someone it'll be up close and personal, not be email.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Um, I don't if you're aware, but Islam didn't invent English. The word you're describing is "submission" or perhaps "conformity." "Peace" means, in English, what it means - Islam doesn't get to define that.
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.
Are those emails legit or fake? Well what better way to reverse this from a super embarrassment for Sony and corporate world to "them hackers are gonna kill us" and make the hackers look even worse and dangerous. Next we'll see the words Anti Corporate Terrorists used.
Those are false flag emails, designed to elicit outrage in the real attackers so they might identify themselves.
Remember, almost everything we hear about the hackers comes via Sony, filtered through the media. It's all theater at this point. Pretty good stuff too. Enjoy.
They're script kiddies
No. Not by any definition of that term I've ever seen used.
You don't know who they are, or what they're prepared to do. We don't even know if the emails are from the same group that perpetrated the data breach.
That group though need to be taken seriously. They're not script kiddies, not even close.
Islam does not really mean peace, it means submission (in Arabic). Salam, from the same Arabic root, means peace. The statement that "Islam means peace" is not something that all Muslims would agree with, it's simply something that people say when being politically correct about Islam. It's silly of course, when it's just about the least peaceful religion imaginable.
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Sony hired FireEye (where In-Q-Tel is a major investor) which since Dec 2013 owns Mandiant. The latter and it's operations features prominently in the HBGary emails from a couple of years ago. I wouldn't put it past any of them to carry out a false flag operation, at the expense of the Sony employees (compare to the "hit me, hit me hard" to lamely cover up letting a prisoner escape) to try and draw out the GOP.
GOP is also doing nobody a favour, if they did, by releasing a couple of pre-release movies. That makes Sony the legitimate victim. Releasing documents, on the other hand, that show dirty backstabbing, expose lies, and otherwise shed some light at the secretive goings-on of a major Copyright MAFIAA member makes Sony the perp.
Don't forget, the keyword of the 2010s is Victimship. The art of making yourself look like the victim. It's not really new, as burglars that were caught in the act and became good acquintances with the homeowner's baseball bat always did this.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.