Anonymous Claims They Will Release "The Interview" Themselves

An anonymous reader writes In a series of tweets the hacker collective Anonymous says they will release "The Interview" to the masses if Sony won't. A few of the tweets read: "Seriously @Sony we warned you. We infiltrated your systems long before North Korea. We thought you'd take it as a warning and fix your s@#t." and "We're not with either side, we just want to watch the movie too and soon you too will be joining us. Sorry, @SonyPictures."

Comments

Marketing?

[joe_frisch]

Sony makes a, by all reports, terrible movie. Suddenly the hack gives it a tremendous amount of press coverage and controversy. When they finally relent and release it, will the overall ticket sales be up or down?

Nah, Sony is much too honest and honorable of a company to consider such a thing......

Re:Marketing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Morally speaking, of course Sony would do something underhanded in order to boost sales.

But this specific tactic doesn't make sense. Too much incriminating evidence about Sony's own underhanded practices has been released by the hackers. Too many of Sony's own people have been put at risk because of this. Sony might be evil, and they might be stupid, but they are not this spiteful.

Re:Marketing?

[TechnoGrl]

Considering that the obvious consequence of doing such a thing (and what actually happened) is a detailed review of the hack by our various national security agencies, and considering that the obvious result of such a review would be finding out that Sony itself was responsible - only the most ill-informed, tin foil wearing conspiracy nut would believe that a huge corporation would expose themselves to such a risk.

Also the release of internal emails and salaries .... seriously? How could you possibly believe that Sony would release that themselves?
Think Better.

Re: Marketing?

[Anonymous Coward]

sure, it boasts sales - but having worked for sony pictures, i can tell you, them not releasing the movie sounds more like they are glad not to have to deal with this (allegedly) turd anymore. it saves them millions of marketing costs if they don't.

i've heard that most sony employees only just now are getting their computer access back - most of them have been working with pen and paper for the last 2 1/2 weeks (except for a rudimentary email program that was shipped to them on new harddrives). so i guess the cost of that alone more than nullifies the profit they could make even off a profitable "interview". and then there's the publicity cost of sony's boss writing racist jokes and bad things about actors. and the loss of some movies getting leaked.

also, btw. anonymous telling them to fix their shit? as if anybody could 100% secure an enterprise with thousands of employees and dozens of different it-systems. any dedicated hacker could and will be able to hack them.

Re: Marketing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The bulk of executive compensation is typically in stock. And either because the stock vests over time or because they're using a blind trust to get around SEC rules, they're only able to sell a little bit at a time. Because they're constantly granting themselves stock (Carl just dropped a deuce. Good job Carl! Have some RSUs! So, how are negotiations progressing with that blood-sucking labor union?), they always have a ton of unsold, illiquid stock.

Also, once you get really rich banks will grant you loans against your stock, even unvested stock. If the value plummets you get an unfriendly call from the bank.

If the stock goes down, the executives' net worth goes down. And, worse, many will have to dip into their own cash reserves. I doubt they'd want to risk their existing wealth on such a hair-brained scheme.

Now, it might make more sense for somebody outside the company to do this. But then that would require alot of trust in the future of Sony, especially because the scheme requires buying Sony stock when they're in the middle of an unprecedented crisis.

Please, people. If you're gonna concoct conspiracy theories, at least try a little harder. There are conspiracies all around you. But for some reason the people who like the most to spin conspiracy theories are the ones totally in the dark about reality.

As always, the truth is stranger (and more maddening and more dangerous) than fiction.

Re: Marketing?

[Jawnn]

Hard perimeter? Please. It's a question of when, not if, those get breached.

Defense in depth -- including detection, response and remediation -- is the only way to play.

This. Perimeter defenses are necessary, of course, but they don't do a damn thing when some exec gets his machine owned by clicking that spear phishing link. So you'd better have something that alerts you when that happens.

Re:Marketing?

[schnell]

We're talking about the company that put a rootkit on its music CDs.

I can't believe I'm defending these guys, but...

The rootkit fiasco was Sony BMG Entertainment, not Sony Pictures. Yes, they are both parts of Sony corporation but they are separate business units with separate reporting structures inside a megagiant international conglomerate. Blaming SPE for Sony BMG actions is like blaming the Department of Agriculture for the NSA's warrantless wiretapping because they are both part of the US government.

Re:Marketing?

[kamapuaa]

In this specific case, BMG was a separate music company that Sony purchased shortly before the scandal. There wasn't a guy working in a Sony office in Japan who approved the rootkit. It happened nine years ago, it didn't actually act as a backdoor to people getting hacked, and I think it's time for Slashdot to get over it.

Re:anon

[Z00L00K]

"Anonymous" is a floating designation, not the same people all the time - so it's hard to define them.

Re:and under the law any uploading the torrent fel

[SeaFox]

What's that? Sharing copyrighted movies (released or otherwise) is against the law?

Thank you, Joe_Dragon. We had absolutely no idea.
We'd better contact these Anonymous guys and let them know, right? I'm sure they would change their mind if they were made aware if this information.
Thank you for linking us to that new information from that forum post from 2003.

press coverage aweful

[bloodhawk]

Some of the news reports over this are just awful. Here in Australia the nightly news talked about how Sony had delayed releasing their "blockbuster". Either they have redefined the meaning of the word to "pile of shit barely B rated movie" or the press is getting even worse.

Re:Marketing?... NOT!

[Jeremi]

"Should I ask him if he liked DJANGO?" she wrote

I can't quite see why this is being made out to be such a scandal. So she asked a colleague if a black guy might be interested in films starring black characters. Okay, it's a bit naive, but scandalous? Really?

It's not like she said anything insensitive to Obama; she merely asked a colleague for advice about how to act appropriately. I'd think that recognizing your ignorance in advance and correcting it would be preferable to ignoring it and then blurting out something stupid/embarrassing to the POTUS.

I'm probably missing some critical detail, but to me it seems like the only thing she's guilty of is not having enough experience interacting with black people in a social context. That's a weakness, to be sure, but if it's a sin then it's a sin that a lot of other people are also guilty of. I think this is a pretty good example of why people are so reluctant to enter any discussion about race -- anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.

Re:News Flash : All Corporate IT security is a jok

[Tom]

The problem isn't just stupid C*Os, though they certainly exist. The problem is also our inability to communicate properly with them. Me personally, guilty as charged, btw. -- it took me many, many years to understand how the C-level thinks and how to talk to them to get what you want. And even then you often don't because of some under-the-radar corporate politics that's going on right then.

No, this hack will in no way change anything. None of the previous public hacks did.

One of the main problems is that C*Os are right that a lot of security money is totally wasted on bullshit, like security awareness trainings for an audience that doesn't give a fuck, shouldn't have to give a fuck, and will forget everything they accidentally heard over their playing Farmville or bullshit bingo while you were talking in front, wasting their precious office time. Or on technically cute systems that are as fascinating as they are useless. Or on trying to convince a C*O that he needs military-grade security without explaining him why he should consider himself a military man.

For about 10 years now the security industry has - at the speed of a turtle - realized that it doesn't take human factors into consideration nearly enough. We've all thrown the mantra of the stupid user around as if it would explain anything, and explained our consistent failure to complete our mission by pointing fingers at others, just like you do above.

Guess what? Everyone in a company has too few resources, executives meddling in their things and idiot managers fucking things up, but the others still manage to largely accomplish their goals.