The FBI has clarified some of the confusing events surrounding the recent hack at Sony Pictures: North Korean hackers were behind it.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said today that the hack & information leak Sony Pictures suffered was the result of a cyber attack by North Korean hackers. Furthermore, these are not independent individuals, but the FBI claims to have enough information to prove the North Korean government themselves were responsible. This was deduced based on the software used for the attacks, malaware that North Korea was known to have used in the past: exactly the same North Korea used against South Korean media, banks and other organizations.
The hackers behind these attacks go by the moniker of “Guardians of Peace”, and made the last month a living hell for Sony as they released financial documents, upcoming movies, and confidential information (salaries, and so on) about employees, actors, and directors. While initially North Korea claimed to have no responsibility, endorsed the hackers by claiming their actions were “a righteous deed”. The motivation seems to be the now infamous Sony Pictures movie “The Interview”, which was to depict an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The movie is, as of now, canceled and won’t see the light of day in order to prevent future attacks. This, obviously, has outraged the American public and a great number of movie-goers along the world.
Via CNET
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at Sony’s weekend: hacks & bomb threats and A new attack on Sony’s servers leaves PSN offline.
Sony doesn’t have the best track record with hackers and DDoS, and now a new attack has sent PSN down for the count.
PSN is down again after a group of hackers took it down via DDoS attacks. Users who attempted to access the site were greeted with text that read “Page Not Found! It’s not you. It’s the internet’s fault”, while gamers reported issues finding and playing games online. The group claiming responsibility for these attacks goes by “Lizard Squad” and posted “PSN Login #offline #LizardSquad” as their Twitter status. Not that long ago, the company had also been hit at their film division, where a good amount of confidential info (including actor’s salaries) was leaked. Sony themselves reported being aware of the issue, and claim to be working on getting things back in order.
Lizard Squad also claimed attacks on the Xbox network last week, after they took down their services for one day. In their own words, that was just “a small dose” of what is to come over the holiday season. Their motives haven’t been made clear, and not much is known about the group except that they seem to have a Russian-based website.
Via BBC
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at Sony’s weekend: hacks & bomb threats and eBay Tells User to Change Passwords Due to Security Hack.
How was your weekend? Upset you weren’t able to play online on your PlayStation devices? At least you didn’t get a bomb threat.
Despite the excellent year so far that Sony has been having with the unparalleled success of the PS4, they have run across a few bumps. Granted, this has nothing to do with poor decisions or planning, but with hacks & bomb threats instead.
The PlayStation Network was hit by a series of DdoS (distributed denials of service) attacks which made it inaccessible to a huge portion of the gaming ecosystem. Note, this is different from a hack where actual data is obtained from customers or the service themselves, and all it did was preventing gamers from enjoying their preferred online experiences.
Gamers & users who attempted to log-in into PSN were greeted by a message claiming the service was down for maintenance, well ahead of the scheduled time. Apparently, these hackers did not only attack Sony, but other online services such as Blizzard Entertainment, League of Legends and Path of Exile.
So far, so good. Hackers do these type of attacks to point out how vulnerable a system is, to call attention for whichever reason (in this case, it was because of Sony’s “corporate greed”), or even just for fun. Yet, things quickly escalated once the same hacking group tweeted a bomb threat for a mid-flight airplane of American Airlines which was carrying John Smedley, the president of Sony Online Entertainment. The plane was eventually diverted from San Diego to Phoenix, quickly changing the issue from minor, annoying hack to threats and terrorism.
Sony has yet to provide an official answer explaining when the service will be restored, and have only clarified that it’s “being adressed“.
Via Shacknews
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at eBay Tells User to Change Passwords Due to Security Hack and UPS Store hack: user data likely compromised.
2011′s hacking of the PlayStation Network comes back into headlines again, as Sony agrees to a class action lawsuit settlement that could be worth millions.
On Wednesday, the US District Court for the Southern District of California preliminarily approved Sony’s offer to a $15 million settlement over the PlayStation Network data breach of 2011, where hackers gained access to customer’s personal information and forced the online service to shut down for many weeks.
After the consequences of the breach, which cost Sony in the “billions of dollars” to correct (not to mention a huge kick to the gut reputation wise), you’ll remember that the company later publicly apologized and reimbursed PSN users, offering up free games, trial-memberships to PlayStation Plus, and free credit reports.
While a show of good accountability, it did nothing to stop the filing of a class action lawsuit in April 2011 by the Rothken Law Firm of California, who accused Sony of allegedly failing “to take reasonable care to protect, encrypt, and secure the private and sensitive data.”
Sony denied the allegations being brought up in the class action lawsuit up till now (charges the company cited had been previously dismissed by the trial court), but through Wednesday’s actions and wanting to escape further legal costs, the company has agreed to terms with a settlement that still needs to be approved by the judge in charge.
Inevitably, the $15 million settlement is expected to be divvied to all plaintiffs involved through the means of free PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable games, free PS3 themes, free subscriptions to the Music Unlimited service and PlayStation Plus, and free funds to the Sony Online Entertainment Station.
There will be two different tiers to the settlement reimbursement process though, with those who did not take advantage of the “Welcome Back” benefits package in 2011 given the option to choose from two items from one of the aforementioned groups, and those who did with only one selection.
Both parties will fall under an aggregate cap of $6 million (for the non-Welcome Back group) and $4 million (for the Welcome Back group), and once both claims are reached, all parties will be rewarded one month PlayStation Plus membership.
Awards of real cash value – of up to $2,500 – might be eligible to those who can prove if some form of identity theft was somehow acted upon them. When all affected parties are accounted for, the rest of the settlement ($2.75 million) will be paid in attorney fees per the of terms of the agreement.
The final hearing to the class action lawsuit, putting a thankful end to the circumstances surrounding the 2011 PSN data breach, is expected to commence on May 1, 2015. There, the judge will will assess the reasonableness of the settlement and give their approval.
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at https://www.facebook.com/Walyou and https://twitter.com/walyou.
