Sony Hackers Likely To Attack Other Hollywood Studios: Security Experts

Hackers, who have recently sneaked into Sony Pictures' private files, may do it again. Other prominent film studios may also suffer similar hacking attack.

The hackers contacted five top executives from Sony Pictures on Nov 21 for monetary compensation. Three days later, the hackers started leaking private files, including unreleased movies. F-Secure researcher Sean Sullivan said that the purpose behind the Sony cyber-attack was extortion. If done by hacktivists, those who use hacking to convey a message; he said that all the files would have been released at once. Sullivan compared the release of private files with "shooting hostages." The hackers are doing it one after another depending on the fulfilment of their demands, he said.

The Guardian quoted Sullivan as saying that the pattern of release of private files might have indicated that other film studios in Hollywood would also be targeted. If other film studios get any extortion threats in future, they should take it seriously. Sullivan said that the hackers might have used a "watering hole" strategy to hack Sony systems. Malware might have been planted on sites of different companies from the same business sector. A similar attack in January 2013 targeted social networking Web sites like Twitter and Facebook. Independent security expert Graham Cluley echoed Sullivan's concerns. He said that the Sony attack was a "warning shot" for other studios.

Sony Pictures, in the meantime, is facing a "humiliating public crisis" due to the leaked documents. The leaked files disclosed information like Angelina Jolie tagged as a "minimally talented spoiled brat." Gawker earlier published a number of points from the leaked emails from Sony executives that had arguably exposed a certain part of the company management which was not happy about the kind of films the studio had recently produced. One of the emails says that Sony Pictures mostly produce "mundane, formulaic" films which have a general "blah-ness" about them. The company is also discouraged against "making the same, safe, soul-less movies and TV shows."

People have different theories about the reason behind the hack. The hackers often wrote English in such a manner that it indicated that they might not be native English speakers. While North Korea's name was earlier suggested as the country responsible for the attack, there is enough disagreement about that as well.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au