Someone Hacked Sony! Was It You?
Sony Corporation — maker of game consoles, producer of Spider-Man movies and inventor of Beta — was compromised last week by a massive hack that brought every computer in their building down. Currently, when they turn on their monitors, all they get is an image of a red skull and a message written in broken English.
Because of the hack, five Sony films have been leaked to the pirate community, some already in theaters, some yet to be. The action movie “Fury,” released to cinema houses last month, has now been illegally downloaded over 888,000 times. The hack also resulted in the early release of “Annie,” but no torrenter in the developed world seems to care about that.
The message vows to do more in the coming weeks, and Sony has hired a private company to unsnare their servers. The origin of this hack is currently unknown, but the group behind it appears to call itself the GOP, which in this case doesn’t stand for “Grand Ole Party” but “Guardians of Peace.” Why guardians of peace would bear a grudge against Sony is currently a mystery.
However, there is one suspicious suspect that vowed retaliation against Sony prior to this happening….it’s Kim Jong Un, dictator-for-life of North Korea. Sony’s motion picture division is the studio backing Seth Rogen’s “The Interview,” about two reporters who are about to interview Jong Un and have orders from the US government to assassinate him. The authority in Pyongyang hasn’t been exactly silent about this blatant act of free speech, sending an open letter to the president of the UN decrying the film as “sponsoring terrorism” and “an act of war.” The fact that the biggest loss from this hack was movie-related has been noted by the FBI, who are investigating.
One thing’s for certain. If “Guardians of Peace” are in North Korea, they’re doing a lousy job of it.