Hacking Sony
The group under suspicion of hacking American movie company Sony Pictures Entertainment has pressed Sony to give up on releasing “The Interview,” a comic film depicting the assassination of Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea.
According to Bloomberg Communications and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Dec. 8 (local time), the self-proclaimed “Guardians of Peace,” or GOP, made a public statement demanding that “Running the pro-terrorism movie that shatters regional peace and potentially leads to war must be ceased at once,” while releasing a fourth set of data that they stole by hacking Sony's data servers.
Though the title of the movie was not expressed in the statement, foreign media see it as the group’s first demand to abandon the release of “The Interview.”
The group also claimed that Sony refused to step away from showing the movie, but Sony explained that it was not given any kind of request.
The group threatened that Co-Chairman Amy Pascal and President of TV Steve Mosko would become victims of privacy hacking, asserting that “Sony and the FBI will never track us down.”
However, confusion rises in the investigation, as the group is arguing that they are not related to blackmail sent by another alleged “leader of the GOP” to Sony employees on Dec. 5.
Sony experienced a cyber attack on the 24th of last month, which resulted in a data leak of the personal profiles of 47,000 personnel including actors and employees.
Officials in the United States are assuming North Korea as the culprit behind the attack, which North Korea denied while praising the incident as “the noble deed of our sympathizers.”
“The Interview” is an upcoming comic film with the plot that an American show host and producer visit North Korea seeking the assassination of North Korea’s leader Kim, and is scheduled to be released this coming Christmas in 63 countries including the United States. After the teaser was released in June, North Korea came out with a strong repulsive reaction, blaming the production as “broad terrorism.”