Sony Pictures Entertainment hacked

Yesterday, Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked by group that calls themselves #GOP. The group hacked Sony’s computers, rendering most of them unusable and displaying picture of red skeleton on desktops. Most people have still fresh memory of this year’s PSN takedown by similar hacker group.  Also the server computers were targeted along the desktop ones. GOP claims that they had inside help from Sony’s own employees that helped them to get info leaked.

They also claim that they have retrieved confidential files that contain a lot of info about various things connected with Sony or the people that work for them. There is currently thread at reddit.com discussing the content in the files and trying to figure out what is included in other zipped files. Here is something interesting that they have found:

Passports:

• list1.txt:Diaz, Cameron – Passport.pdf
• list1.txt:Angelina Jolie passport.pdf

Valuable financial information:

• list1.txt:2013-2014-2015 SPE Media Budgets.xlsx
• list1.txt:FY 2015 BUDGET Presentation_v12 – FINAL.xls

Mail boxes:

• list2.txt:Deals.pst
• list2.txt:backup.pst (tons of those)

And very ironic:

• list1.txt:INSURANCE for security breaches.doc
• list2.txt:Security Breach Course Of Action.v1.txt

Some of the people on reddit claim that there are also passwords of FTP servers .

Ironically even people at Sony are not immune to piracy as some of the filenames are names for MKV format files, which is mostly used file format for distributing movies and series while keeping the size smaller and quality on acceptable level, of TV show Human Planet  made by BBC.

The hacking scandal is entering day 2. Sony has issued official statement regarding this case: “We are investigating an IT matter.” In any case be sure to change your passwords on PSN and other services provided by Sony, just to be sure.