Sony Pictures hack 2014 (Literature Review).

 

When the breach happened to Sony, all fingers were pointed to North Korea. After their statement, releasing the movie would be an “act of war” (BBC, 2014).The guardian of peace (GOP) who claimed to be behind the attack were described as a “righteous deed” by North Korea. However, North Korea denied having a hand in the attack. Yet, some evidence was found that has made North Korea seem like the one behind this attack. For example, the malware showed the development language used was Korean. It was assumed the developers speak fluent Hebrew, yet these strings might have been left behind to throw off the investigator (Austin, 2014). Moreover, The IP addresses linked to the servers have found associated with North Korea by the FBI, the malware code lines and data selection methods are similar to malware was developed by North Korea, and the attack technique that hit Sony is similar to the 2013 attack against South Korean banks which was executed by North Korea. Yet, all these figures might have been done intentionally to throw off the investigators (Pagliery, 2014). 

 

Apparently, the breach that happened to Sony Pictures 2014 was not the first. In 2011 PlayStation Network was hacked, and more than 77 million user’s information like names, addresses, email addresses, usernames, passwords, and so on were stolen (Quinn and Arthur, 2011). Thus, it was one of the largest breaches of its kind; Sony even stated that credit card details and security numbers, and expiry dates might have been stolen. After the first distributed denial of service attacks, another attack hit PlayStation that had made them go offline for a couple of weeks (Philips, 2016). A known vulnerability in the non-specified Web application server platform used in the PSN was exploited by the hacker. However, Shinji Hasejima, Sony’s CIO, did not specify what vulnerabilities were exploited to avoid future attacks. Moreover, the CIO added that Sony was unaware of the vulnerability and added that they would enhance their security measures as an additional firewall would be added, techniques to detect any unusual traffic in the network, and a better way of confirmation management (Chirgwin, 2011).  Sony estimated losses from the 2011 attack is 171 million dollars (Schreier, 2011).

(Square, 2019)

 References:

 

Austin, E., 2014. Questioning North Korean Sony Breach Involvement. ProQuest, [online] Available at: <https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.dmu.ac.uk/docview/1651932278?pq-origsite=summon> [Accessed 23 November 2020].

 

BBC, 2014. North Korea threatens war on US over Kim Jong-un movie. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-28014069> [Accessed 23 November 2020].

 

Chirgwin, R., 2011. Sony: 'PSN Attacker Exploited Known Vulnerability' • The Register. [online] Theregister.com. Available at: <https://www.theregister.com/Print/2011/05/01/psn_service_restoration/> [Accessed 23 November 2020].

 

Pagliery, J., 2014. What caused Sony hack: What we know now. CNN, [online] Available at: <https://money.cnn.com/2014/12/24/technology/security/sony-hack-facts/> [Accessed 23 November 2020].

 

Philips, T., 2016. Five Years Ago Today, Sony Admitted The Great PSN Hack. [online] Eurogamer.net. Available at: <https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-04-26-sony-admitted-the-great-psn-hack-five-years-ago-today> [Accessed 23 November 2020].

 

Quinn, B. and Arthur, C., 2011. PlayStation Network hackers access data of 77 million users. The Guardian, [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/apr/26/playstation-network-hackers-data> [Accessed 23 November 2020].

 

Schreier, J., 2011. Sony Estimates $171 Million Loss From PSN Hack. [online] Wired. Available at: <https://www.wired.com/2011/05/sony-psn-hack-losses/> [Accessed 23 November 2020].

 

 Square, P., 2019. PSN Reaches 94 Million Active Users, With Over One Third Subscribed To Playstation Plus. [online] Push Square. Available at: <https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2019/05/psn_reaches_94_million_active_users_with_over_one_third_subscribed_to_playstation_plus> [Accessed 23 November 2020].