Sony Pictures corporate network compromised by a major attack

The Sony Pictures corporate network was targeted by a major cyber attack that has brought off-line every computer within the company.

The corporate network of Sony Pictures is reportedly breached and taken offline, the news was published on TheNextWeb website. Sony Pictures manages distribution of the Sony film and TV productions.

The attackers breached the service this morning, meanwhile a thread started on Reddit social news website announcing that every computer in the network was shut down due to a hack.

The Reddit thread reported that an image was visible on all employee computers, reading “Hacked by #GOP” and demanding their “requests be met” along with links to leaked data. Below the image displayed on the company computers, the text appeared on the image reads:

Hacked By #GOP

Warning:

We’ve already wasned you, and this is just a beggining.
We continue till our request be met.
We’ve obtained all your Internal data, Including your secrets and top secrets.
If you don’t obey us, we’ll release data shown below to the world.
Determine what will you do till November the 24th, 11:00 PM (GMT).

It is still unclear the motivation behind the attack and the nature of the attackers identified with the name #GOP. The message in the first image suggests that if the company doesn’t disclose the truth within this evening, #GOP will publicly reveal details of the hack.

The user that posted the thread on Reddit referred in a threat published a year ago that he worked at Sony Pictures.

The alleged hackers also released several zip files, that apparently contain the data stolen from Sony Pictures, the archives contain a list of filenames of a number of documents pertaining to financial records and private keys for access to servers.

According to the TheNextWeb, a source within Sony has anonymously confirmed the hack.

“A source within Sony has anonymously confirmed to TNW that the hack and image that have appeared on computers inside Sony Pictures is real. They said that “a single server was compromised and the attack was spread from there.”

According to our source, everyone was going home following the hack: “We’re all going to work from home. Can’t even get on the internet.” states the post on TheNextWeb.

Variety website reports that employees at Sony have been warned not to connect their computers to the internal network, neither to check corporate email, in response to the cyber attack the company has switched off VPN and email access and also requested to the staff to disable Wi-Fi on all mobile devices.

“Sony Pictures Entertainment has told employees company wide to not connect to corporate networks or access email, after the studio was hit Monday by what appeared to be a malicious hacker attack threatening to disclose “secrets,” Variety has confirmed.”

Stay tuned for further information.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs –  Sony Pictures, hacking)