Hackers na Sony Pictures

[Jorge-Vieira]

The Interview to stream on Netflix too

The Interview has been a real success in many ways. Along with marking a stand – after a nudge from Mr Obama – against threats of violence, its digital release has shown that making a film available online for people to stream at home along with its cinema release, actually works. After just a select release in smaller theatres and a bigger one online through the likes of iTunes and Youtube, it’s made over $40 million, which means it’s not far off clearing a profit. Perhaps now with a Netflix deal in the works, it will do, as the film will begin streaming on the platform on 24th January.
The only downside is, once again, it will be a US and Canada only release. This is in line with how the film has been launched so far, with anyone wanting to watch it outside of those two countries having to resort to convoluted methods to pay for it, by acquiring a US credit card, as well as using a VPN or similar service to spoof their location. On top of that, you have all the pirates that couldn’t be bothered to jump through so many hoops to watch the film.

This is exciting enough news to slap something around that’s for sure
You have to imagine with all the publicity the film had also, that it would have made a lot of money if released online worldwide. Instead of continuing with its digital launch experiment around the world though, Sony only has plans to keep the film digitally available in the US, releasing it in cinemas elsewhere as usual.
The Netflix debut was revealed as part of the streaming service’s quarterly earnings report, which also highlighted increased growth, seeing it bring in over $1.3 billion in Q4 of last year alone. That represents a near $400 million increase year on year.

Noticia:
http://www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-m...n-netflix-too/

[Jorge-Vieira]

In case you missed it, 'The Interview' now available on Netflix

If you wanted to watch a legal copy of "The Interview" but didn't want to pay to rent or purchase it, you can now watch it on Netflix. The data breach suffered by Sony Pictures, courtesy of the Guardians of the Peace, means the recently-released film has been made available to Netflix less than one month following its box office debut.

image: http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/news/...le-netflix.jpg

Sony Pictures wanted to just break even on the film - and that goal has been accomplished - so now it's time to open it up to as many viewers as possible.

Noticia:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/43127/...lix/index.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

Dennis Rodman doesn't believe his friends in Pyongyang hacked Sony

Dennis Rodman doesn't believe North Korea is responsible for attacking Sony Pictures, with the former NBA champion thinking Pyongyang wouldn't lash out against Sony Pictures just for making "The Interview."

image: http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/news/...acked-sony.jpg

"If the North wanted to hack anything in the world, anything in the world, really, they are going to go hack a movie? Really?!" Rodman recently said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "How many movies have there been attacking North Korea? And they never hacked those. North Korea is going to hack a comedy, a movie that is really nothing? I can't see that happening. Of all the companies... really? Over a movie?

It's worth noting, however, North Korea has been blamed for attacking South Korean infrastructure, including financial institutions - and has a budding cybercriminal unit that is well-trained and financed by Pyongyang. Furthermore, if North Korea actually is responsible for breaching SPE, it was likely done to further develop its cyberespionage abilities that could be used against future targets.

Noticia:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/43131/...ony/index.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

Sony postpones earnings reports due to hacking attack

The beleaguered Sony has announced a delay in reporting their third-quarter earnings. The delay comes as a result of the intense hacking attack suffered at the hands of the North Korean government, if you believe the FBI. The hack was purportedly undertaken as a means of punishing Sony Pictures for the forthcoming movie 'The Interview', which soundly blasts the benevolent Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jung-un.

image: http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/news/...ing-attack.png

Sony has requested an approval to delay their earnings report, chalking the issue up to damaged network hardware and the loss of a large amount of data. The reference to network hardware likely means their networked storage, such as HDDs in a SAN or NAS, as the bug wiped the drives clean once the hackers were done stealing data.

Sony continues to experience severe disruption of its internal computer systems in the wake of the attack. They initially shut down the entire system, but parts are now functioning again. However, crucial segments, such as financial and accounting applications, are shuttered until the middle of February.

Sony will conduct a February 4th earnings conference call on schedule. This should be very interesting since they will likely give broad financial estimates, and perhaps some more clues of the scale of the attack. As it stands, it seems that Sony was delivered a more devastating blow than many were aware of. With their entire financial database deleted, Sony faces a long road to restoring their company to normal operating status, and the damage estimates will likely easily surpass a billion dollars.

Noticia:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/43148/...ack/index.html

[Winjer]

Sony to spend $15 million dealing with last year’s cyber attack

Sony was originally supposed to announce its financial results today but due to last year’s costly cyber attack on Sony Pictures servers, the company has had to issue a forecast for how it performed instead, showing that one of the biggest expenditures for Sony at the moment is dealing with last year’s cyber attack.Sony will be spending around $15 million to fix up its equipment and recover from last year’s hack. Investigations in to the hack are also still ongoing on Sony’s end. That’s not all that Sony announced though, it looks like the company’s mobile division is suffering as there are plans to cut 2100 jobs.

Despite the expected job losses, the Sony mobile division did manage to achieve a slight profit last quarter, which the company is pinning on a smaller range of smartphones. Additionally, despite the Sony Pictures hack, the movie production arm of the company still managed to pull in a $20 million profit.
Sony’s total net profits between October and December last year amounted to $756 million.

Saiu cara a brincadeira...

[Jorge-Vieira]

Pascal quits after Sony hack

High profile exit
It seems that the Japanese co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Amy Pascal has been required to take the fall for the Sony hack.


In the old days, Pascal would have been required to go to the Sony car-park, compose a Haiku about the transience of life while ripping out her guts with a corporate letter opener while a PR bunny scatters cherry blossom everywhere.
Now the price of failure is to quit, take a golden handshake and go somewhere hot for a bit before taking up a new job somewhere else in the industry.
Pascal was finished by hackers angry about a movie she championed mocking North Korea's dictator exposed a raft of embarrassing emails between Pascal and other Hollywood figures.
She has been keeping a low profile since her emails were leaked by hackers and widely reported by media,
particularly one in which she made racially insensitive remarks about President Barack Obama's taste in movies.
Sony Pictures said Pascal will step down from her current post in May to launch her own production venture on the studio lot with its financial backing.
Sony Pictures Chief Executive and Chairman Michael Lynton told Reuters the emails leaked late last year played no role in his and Pascal's decision not to renew her contract in March 2015.

Noticia:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/36957-p...fter-sony-hack

[Jorge-Vieira]

Report: Russians (Not Just North Korea) Behind Sony Data Hack, Are Still Doing It Right Now

The hack into Sony Pictures was big news late last year, but that was last year. They figured out who did it, fixed the problem, and moved on, right? Wrong, says one analyst firm: not only did Sony finger the wrong bad guys, but the hack is still going on to this day.
The information comes from internet firm Taia Global, which has released a report (PDF) claiming that not only were Russian hackers at least additionally, if not solely responsible for the intrusion into Sony’s networks, but also that they are still there, siphoning data off as we speak.
Taia has been saying since December that they feel an analysis of the language used in the hack points to Russian, not North Korean, involvement. However, their report does not definitively conclude whether North Korea was or was not involved. Instead, they write, it’s incidental to the larger problem, which is that Russians were also (separately or not) involved and still, to this day, have access to the company’s internal networks.
Sony not only “failed to differentiate or even acknowledge that more than one state or non-state actor was involved,” claims Taia, but worse, the companies Sony hired to fix it have not done so.
Far from being a thing of the past, Taia writes, “Sony Pictures Entertainment remains in a state of breach and is actively losing files to Russian mercenary hackers.”
Regardless of which possibility is correct, the attribution made in the Sony case failed to differentiate or even acknowledge that more than one state or non-state actor was involved. Furthermore, the Data Forensics and Incident Response companies hired by Sony to remediate this breach have, to date, failed to do so. Sony Pictures Entertainment remains in a state of breach and is actively losing files to Russian mercenary hackers.
The company now says that a well-known Russian hacker, who has contacts who are other hackers, has spoken with them and provided several documents obtained from inside Sony after the data breach was identified in November:

The evidence … consists of seven Excel spreadsheets five of which are dated from November 30, 2014 through December 10, 2014, and six email messages, two of which are dated Jan 14 and Jan 23, 2015. It also includes the “Employee Update” message of December 8 which discussed the “system disruption”, advised all employees not to use any thumb drives that had been plugged into Sony’s network prior to November 23rd, and provided a list of unlocked Ricoh printers and their locations.

Taia says that all documents appear authentic, and that one has been confirmed as authentic by the Sony employee who created it. None of the documents have been part of any of the prior data dumps of Sony’s information by Guardians of Peace, the name of the group that claimed credit for the hack.
The hack into Sony Pictures’ systems was identified late in November of 2014, and persons acting at the behest of the North Korean government quickly became the favored suspect. Sony said in December that yes, they thought North Korea did it and federal investigators said a short time later that yes, they thought so too.
The hack led to Sony cancelling their theatrical release of the comedyThe Interview, a move that President Obama called “a mistake.” Sony then pivoted and released the movie through online channels, where it actually did pretty well.
Inside Sony Pictures, the fallout from the data breach still continues. The co-chairman just resigned today, and the company is still being sued by employees whose data was stolen.

Noticia:
http://consumerist.com/2015/02/05/re...-it-right-now/

[Jorge-Vieira]

NSA says North Korea definitely to blame for Sony attack

The National Security Agency (NSA) believes North Korea is behind the Sony Pictures attack because of software used to breach the company. SPE was targeted in November by a group calling itself the "Guardians of Peace," with emails, employee personal information, movies, and other data stolen - and posted online.

image: http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/news/...ony-attack.jpg

"We ultimately ended up generating the signatures to recognize the activity used against Sony," said NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers, in a statement during a security conference in Canada. "From the time the malware left North Korea to the time it got to Sony's headquarters in California, it crossed four different commanders' lines or areas in the US construct."

Cyberattacks are causing confusion for government agents, unexpectedly spending more time investigating breaches against private sector companies - as attacks mount against critical infrastructure and government agencies.

If you had told me (in the past) that I was going to be spending time working on an offensive act against a motion picture company, I would have thought: 'What? What does that have to do with me?' And yet that's the world we find ourselves in."

Noticia:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/43661/...ack/index.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

Trojan Posing as Infamous Movie The Interview Attacks Android Phones

Malware, under the guise of notorious Seth Rogen comedy The Interview, has been attacking Android smartphones in India. The Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In) first detected the Trojan, proliferated via a link offering a supposed download of The Interview. The virus is designed to compromise any banking apps installed on the phone in order to access the users’ accounts.
The CERT-In blog reads:

“Once installed (the virus), the application will display an icon using imagery from the poster of the movie The Interview. When the Trojan is being installed, it requests permissions to perform either open network connections, write to external storage devices or install application packages.
When the app (application) is installed, it claims to allow users to watch the movie The Interview for free but instead installs a two-stage banking Trojan onto infected devices.”

The hope is that, now that cybersecurity has detected and catalogued the Trojan, that it will not be allowed to spread beyond the Indian locale.
Source: DNA

Noticia:
http://www.portugal-tech.pt/showthre...2287#post72287

[Jorge-Vieira]

Sony Pictures Boss Keeps His Job After Hacking Reshuffle

Made with Flare More Info'>
Michael Lynton, the Chief Executive of Sony Pictures, has managed to survive a recent reshuffle and keep the top job. Sony decided to make some changes to their motion picture arm following the massive hack they were subject to late last year. The US Government says that North Korea was behind the incident, while others still doubt those claims.
As part of the reshuffle, Amy Pascal, former Chairperson of Sony Pictures, was asked to resign. She left the company earlier this month, marking the first big change as part of the reshuffle, supposedly initiated by Sony CEO Kaz Hirai. However, her boss, Michael Lynton, head of Sony Pictures, has managed to come away unscathed. Lynton appeared to deal with the incident well, appearing on television shortly after the hack to declare the company’s efforts in making The Interview available to view.
Sarah Pascal was faced with petitions calling for her resignation following the leaking of emails that were deemed racist by certain groups. While Sony officially said that she “resigned”, Pascal herself later said that she was “fired”.

Noticia:
http://www.eteknix.com/sony-pictures...ing-reshuffle/

[Jorge-Vieira]

Sony Pictures email hack database published by WikiLeaks

Last year's debilitating attack on Sony Pictures by hacking collective 'the Guardians of Peace' which flung the darkest secrets of the studio into the public domain has now been published by WikiLeaks, with 30,287 documents and 173,132 available as a searchable database.

image: http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/news/...-wikileaks.jpg

In making the material available, Julian Assange has described the correspondence as "newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there". The press release states that "WikiLeaks' publication of The Sony Archives will ensure this database remains accessible to the public for years to come", and will no doubt continue to embarrass the company well into the future."

Sony Pictures have criticised the move in a statement to the LA Times, saying the company "vehemently disagree with WikiLeaks' assertion that this material belongs in the public domain and will continue to fight for the safety, security, and privacy of our company and its more than 6,000 employees."

Noticia:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/44621/...aks/index.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

Sony Pictures hack serving as the basis for upcoming cyber security documentary

A film documenting the massive Sony Pictures hack late last year is in the works. It’ll examine a number of popular and alternative (conspiracy) theories according to an exclusive from The Hollywood Reporter.
As you likely know by this point, North Korea was fingered as the culprit behind the attack shortly after it was discovered on November 24. The general consensus is that North Korea pulled the stunt in protest to the studio’s film The Interview, a political comedy that focused on the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Some cybersecurity experts, however, aren’t buying that explanation and believe it was an inside job. As the publication notes, the hackers exhibited intimate knowledge of Sony’s servers while simultaneously pulling off a refined media campaign that seemed unlikely to come from such an isolated country.
The film will be directed and produced by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, respectively, the couple responsible for 2013’s Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary The Square.
As luck would have it, Noujaim and Amer were working on a broader documentary about international cyber attacks at the time the Sony hack was unfolding. It was at that point that they decided to use this breach as an entry point into the overall topic.
Amer told THR that the Sony story is an important chapter in this larger issue, adding that the analysts and experts they’ve spoken to view this as the 9/11 of cyber attacks. Its implications will be felt for years to come, Amer concluded.
No word yet on when the unnamed film will be complete.

Noticia:
http://www.techspot.com/news/60881-s...-security.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

Sony Pictures Reaches Settlement With Ex-Employees Over Hacking

Since the terms of this settlement were not disclosed, let's all take our best guess at what Sony gave these people to get them to drop their lawsuit. PS4 and some movies? A $1,200 walkman and some free music? Credit monitoring and some cash?

Sony Pictures has reached a settlement agreement with nine former employees who sued the studio claiming their personal information was stolen in a hack last year related to the release of the satirical movie "The Interview." Terms of the agreement were not revealed in a filing Wednesday in Los Angeles federal court. The settlement still requires court approval.

Noticia:
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2015/09/...g#.VeiEppf0OTQ

[Jorge-Vieira]

New evidence points to North Korea being behind Sony 2014 hack

Back in 2014, Sony Pictures suffered from a massive cyber attack, which had long-lasting repercussions for the company. Now, over a full year later, some new evidence has come to light, tying the attack to a Korean malware campaign.
Researchers over at Kaspersky and Alienvault Labs (via: Wired) managed to trace the campaign by comparing samples of malware from the Sony attacks from samples with other attacks across the globe. According to the researchers, this is strong evidence that the Sony attacks were in-fact carried out by a government-sponsored group in North Korea.

A lot of the evidence uncovered pertains to software tools used by the group behind the infamous Sony hacks as well as those used in other hacks. There are a lot of distinct similarities to be found, including passwords for activating certain programs, some attacks were also carried out using the exact same tactics.
In all, 500 samples were recovered and traced back to a group that has been known to frequently target South Korea, further pointing towards North Korea behind it all.

Noticia:
http://www.kitguru.net/gaming/securi...ony-2014-hack/