Sony Movies Leak Online After Hack Attack

[shamu726]

On Monday the computer systems of Sony Pictures were hijacked by a group calling themselves the Guardians of Peace. With sensitive corporate information reportedly in the hands of the attackers, several DVD screener copies of new Sony movies have appeared online.

The company is certainly no stranger to security issues but this week has been particularly miserable even by Sony’s ‘high’ standards.

Hacked on Monday by a group calling themselves the Guardians of Peace, Sony Pictures’ systems remain down today, a sign of the situation’s gravity.

While the attack appears to be aimed at punishing Sony for its actions in the past, reports suggest that the attackers also made off with an estimated 11,000 gigabytes of files. Seriously upping the ante, the hackers warned Sony that “sensitive” data would be released into the wild if their demands were not met.

A thread on Reddit has been piecing together details of what information could have been obtained and it’s not pretty. Documents containing passport and visa information for cast and crew working on Sony movies, Outlook inboxes, documents detailing the company’s IT systems plus accounting and research information appear to be just the tip of what could be a gigantic data iceberg.

Since this is Sony Pictures it will come as no surprise that video files are also reported as being part of the hackers’ booty. Interestingly the first reports detailed pirated TV shows which may have been downloaded by Sony staff.

Adventure Time-2x04a-Power Animal.avi
Adventure Time Her Parents.avi
Adventure Time The Silent King.avi
Adventure Time-2x09b-Susan Strong.avi
Adventure Time-2x11a-Belly of the Beast.avi
Human.Planet.S01E05.720p.BluRay.x264-SHORTBREHD.mkv
Human.Planet.S01E02.720p.BluRay.x264-SHORTBREHD.mkv
Human.Planet.S01E06.720p.BluRay.x264-SHORTBREHD.mkv
Human.Planet.S01E03.720p.BluRay.x264-SHORTBREHD.mkv
Human.Planet.S01E04.720p.BluRay.x264-SHORTBREHD.mkv
Human.Planet.S01E01.720p.BluRay.x264-SHORTBREHD.mkv
Human.Planet.S01E07.720p.BluRay.x264-SHORTBREHD.mkv

But while Sony desperately tried to get its systems back online and figure out what had been taken, mid-week and within minutes of each other, DVD screener copies of four Sony movies began appearing online. Making matters worse, just one has been officially released in the United States. They are:

‘Still Alice‘ starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin (US date: Jan 16, 2015)

‘Mr Turner‘ starring Timothy Spall. (US date: Dec 19, 2014)

‘Annie‘ starring Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. (US date: Dec 19, 2014)

‘Fury‘ starring Brad Pitt (US date: Oct 17, 2014)

In the absence of any useful comment from Sony there’s little to officially link the leaks with Monday’s hack attack. However, a page on popular torrent site 1337x reveals that a user uploaded these and another upcoming Sony movie (‘To Write Love on Her Arms’ – US release date March 2015) on Wednesday or Thursday with a naming convention highlighting Sony.

While all of the leaked titles are proving popular, the Sony-watermarked ‘Fury’ is way out in front and currently the second most downloaded movie among Pirate Bay users.

Finally, among the thousands of files taken from Sony there are other items of interest to piracy watchers. The files detailed below appear to relate to the automatic content recognition systems operated by anti-piracy company Audible Magic.

audible_magic_sftp_private_key.ppk
audible_magic_sftp_private_key.ppk
set_ssh-private-key-file.htm
audible_magic_sftp_private_key.ppk
private_and_private_key.txt

Whether more Sony movies will appear online in the days to come remains to be seen, but the fallout from this week’s hack will send shockwaves through the company for months to come.

Source: TorrentFreak

[Avitar]

Torrenting time :guns:

Now I'll get to see if these are good before taking someone to the movie theater to see them with. It would be interesting if "Fury 2014" is a really good movie and MORE people go to see it because of the leak and all their friends talking about it.

That being said, anyone have the magnet links to these movies?

[Ponting]

It's a hard enough life indeed for Sony Pictures.

Last week, hackers attacked the movie studio, leaving employees' screens glowing with a red skeleton labeled "Hacked by #GOP" and a list of instructions and demands.

Since then, at least five new movies have been leaked online.

Four of those movies were previously unreleased. At least one of them, Annie - a remake of the musical play starring Jamie Foxx - was timed to be a holiday blockbuster with a release date of 19 December.

The other four movies that wound up making their debut on piracy hubs were Mr Turner, Still Alice, To Write Love On Her Arms and the World War II drama Fury.

According to Variety, Fury is now the second most-popular pirated film, with more than 1.2 million downloads as of 11am on Sunday.

The pirated movie copies began showing up online just days after last week's security breach reportedly forced the film and TV arm of Sony to shut down its network.

The group behind the 24 November attack is calling itself "Guardians of Peace".

The message it left behind after the attack threatened to release the company's "secrets and top secrets".

Sony has reportedly been investigating whether the attack might have been launched by North Korea - a hunch that's bolstered by the nation's outrage over the imminent release of The Interview, a Sony comedy that depicts a CIA plot to assassinate North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-Un.

The film stars Seth Rogen and James Franco as two TV journalists who secure an interview with Jong-Un and are later coached by the CIA to assassinate him.

North Korea's government has, expectedly, not reacted very positively to the notion of making a comedy out of murdering its leader.

In fact, it's promised "merciless" retaliation against the US if The Interview is released, calling the film an "act of war."

When asked about its involvement in the attack on Sony Pictures, a spokesperson for the North Korean government said:

The hostile forces are relating everything to the DPRK [North Korea]. I kindly advise you to just wait and see.

The day after last week's attack began, The Verge reportedly got an email from a related address from somebody who identified themselves as "lena".

The correspondent was vague about the attack, alluding to insider help from staff "with similar interests".

The Verge reports that the email was from an open account that allows anyone to send mail from it without entering a password, meaning that the message might have come from somebody who has nothing whatsoever to do with the attack.

At this point, even the link between last week's attack and the subsequent release of movies onto pirate sites is an assumed one.

In other words, we don't know how this plot's going to resolve - just that there are a few million pirates out there who now know how the plots will resolve in movies that aren't even in the theaters yet.

Source: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/12/02/annie-fury-other-sony-blockbuster-movies-pirated-after-network-attack/

[Matt]

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