The holidays are a meter for eggnog and presents and freaky credulous rituals involving an old elf - military man and his pack of flying caribou . It ’s also a time to cuddle up by the hearth and begrudgingly explain the latest technology intelligence to your congenator . This week ’s version : The Sony nag .
Lucky for everyone , the technical school involved in Sony ’s woefulness ( as we currently understand it ) is easily shorthanded as “ hack on , ” and from there it ’s a fascinating recital of a Steve Jobs flick gone bad , threats of terrorism , North Korean intrigue , and the staggering and unremitting cowardice of multinational , publicly - hold corporation .
So I heard that North Korea invaded Sony and now James Flacco is bankrupt?
Whatever your vector into the story , there ’s a ripe luck Uncle Nigel will have at least some part of it untimely . Which is intelligible ! The Sony taxicab involves a cluster of different players , some of which are subsidiaries of others and some of which have really stupid name .
Quick recap : A drudge group that identifies as the Guardians of Peace ( GOP)broke intothe interior meshwork at Sony Pictures ( a U.S. based subsidiary of the Japan - ground parent company , Sony ) and stole everything they could find . Everything . The GOP take to have 100 TB of data of emails , moving-picture show , passwords , paysheet info , what have you . They startedleaked some moving-picture show and emails , then receive all spicy and botheredabout The Interview — an ( unreleased ) moving-picture show where Seth Rogen and James Franco assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong - Un — and startedmaking explicit terrorist threatsagainst any theater showing it .
As a effect , The Interview got cancel , and the United States isofficially blamingNorth Korea for the hack . Now that the cyber-terrorist nonplus what they want , they’ve promised to arrest , but they definitely have tons more information to leak out if they get in the climate .
It ’s a flock to process , but to explain it all to your , try :
A couple of months ago , some hacker bring out into the computers at Sony Pictures and took everything . They leaked out a bunch of private e-mail before they started making more open terrorist threats and did everything they could to get a dumb picture telephone “ The Interview ” cancelled . Sony panicked after having been hacked so hard so they completely gave in and the hacker acquire .
What’s so bad about a couple of emails?
If you get this chemical reaction , it ’s important to charge out it is n’t just “ some ” email ; it is “ all of the e-mail , and everything else , too . ” And as for what ’s so bad , there are plenty of exercise .
So far , the electronic mail have unearthed somereally mad dramasurrounding Aaron Sorkin ’s biopic about Steve Jobs , the one that was presuppose to be better than that lame Ashton Kutcher one . It also come out Channing Tatum as … geek . You experience , naughty chit-chat .
But it gets so much worse than that . The hackers have also been releasing personal data for thousands of current and former employees , payroll datum , and Social Security numbers . It ’s not an understatement to say the cyber-terrorist have everything . Former employees arealready suing for damagesbecause there ’s no telling where that datum could go from here , and even if the hackers never leak it , you ca n’t put a genie back in the bottle .
Spin it like this :
It ’s like if someone broke into your house but rather of stealing whatever they ascertain lying around they just stole … the whole theatre . Like if someone ran off with your messy basement , they ’d have access code to thing you did n’t even realize are there . That ’s what ’s so concerning ; the cyber-terrorist not only have all variety of important personal information like social security measure numbers , but also stuff even they probably do n’t know about yet .
What’s The Interview? Why’d it make such a mess? Also let’s go see it.
The movie that ’s supposedly at the nerve of all this has a plot that revolve about around a cheesy public lecture show host and his manufacturer going to North Korea to shoot down a sitting head of state . By all account it’sprobablynot very salutary , but that ’s besides the point because nobody can see it .
Last hebdomad , the GOP threaten violence on any dramatic art picture The Interview . In answer , Sony made screenings optional ; it put the onus on individual dramatics and chains to make the call . The five major theater chains used that exemption so say “ OK ! FUCK THIS!”and bailed , at which point Sonycanceled the acquittance altogether . Also , somewhere in there Paramount felt go forth out andcanceled screening of Team America : World Police , which some ballsier dramaturgy had contrive to show instead of The Interview .
The obvious alternative to lease the terrorists gain ( well , after having allow them pull ahead ) would be to put this sucker online . While Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton say hestill wants people to see the picture show , the troupe also steadfastly hasno current plansto exit it , despite divvy up a parent ship’s company with a cyclosis service call Crackle , and another called Sony Video Unlimited . It ’s got options !
The GOP almost certainly has a transcript , although they ’re pretty evidently not run to leak out it . you could watcha GIF where Kim Jong - Un ’s caput explodesthough .
essay :
Nope . Not right now . The hackers probably have it but they have n’t put it out , and Sony got scared into not releasing it at all . There are rumour they might release it online so that theatre do n’t have to be involved , but so far that does n’t seem to be happening . It seems inevitable that it ’ll come out somehow , but by then you in all likelihood wo n’t care any longer . Also , again , it ’s probably a somewhat terrible flick .
So, North Korea did it, right?
Ehhhhhh . The official story is “ yes”but there ’s pretty much no way it ’s that simple . How much you need to cut into into the counter - evidence probably depends on how fluent your conversation cooperator is in truther .
When the hacks first started , the was zero mention of The Interview or North Korea or anything like that . There were just some leaked picture show , and assorted leaked emails . Standard stuff . It was n’t until about a week into the leak , after bystanders started making the “ Sony Pictures pictures is place out The Interview ! ” connection , that the hacker started railing against it , peril their little cyber - asses offuntil the movie got pull .
The FBI has officially state North Korea is behind the attack , citing sparse ( and likely confidential ) grounds tie the computer code used in the attack to code North Korean hackers have used before . North Korea , and the as - yet - unimplicated China , both traverse it , which means absolutely nothing . caboodle of voguish folks alsothink it was someone elseentirely , so …
expect like it?The FBI and the NSA investigated and aver the artillery these hackers used look a mass like ones we experience are North Korean . That ’s the best explanation for now but there ’s pretty much no way it ’s that simple . Maybe China is involve , or some other group no one knows about it . It ’s probably not just North Korea . And if you ’re into cabal theories , North Korea might just be a smokescreen .
So what now?
The Sony hack is easy the expectant and most widely report corporate hack in chronicle , so it only makes signified to question what the ramifications will be . The only certainty is that they wo n’t be good .
The Sony hackers may have call a ceasefire for now , but they still have an assload of Sony data on their hands . The FBI ’s investigation of the hack is still ongoing , and while all sign point to North Korea right now , there ’s no telling what more they might obtain . In a assertion on the hack , Obama allege the U.S. will respond to North Korea ’s cyberattack , though there ’s also no word on what that ’ll look like yet . essentially a whole clustering is poised to chance , but who knows when it ’ll all down off . Or how much of it we ’ll even see unfold .
But the result of this hack will be way more wide - reaching than any one movie or studio or corporation or cyber-terrorist radical . The taxicab will undoubtedly goad terrified party into being more secure , but that ’s about where the good news program terminate . The successful nag against Sony was bad , but Sony ’s fall was worse . hacker with capable information - slip creature on their hands now have an effective design to reverse to whenever they want to convey a company to its knees .
Try draw it all up like this :
Yeah , there ’s no way this is over but it ’s impossible to guess at what ’s come next . you could just be sure that every byplay out there is run to be more disquieted about hack than ever . That means they ’ll be safer on the security side , but also safer about what they do and say for fear they ’ll piss off an irregular and powerful army of hackers . It ’s kind of a pickle !
But I ’ll be bedamn if I occupy about this any more on Christmas . devolve me that eggnog so I can have a little more before I go take a nap .
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