Did The Sony Hackers Win?

Corporate America has been dealing with its ups and downs that has affected the U.S. economy tremendously over the last decades, and it now has one more thing to worry about now, its cyber security.

Hacks are a usual threat to a company, and for one as big as Sony, the amount of hack attempts received per day exceed the 5,000 mark. Most attacks are useless, and are deemed not dangerous to the safety of the company or its records. But the final attack came right before Sony wanted to release its latest comic flick by James Franco.

The hackers behind the Sony attack got a hold on a lot more information than Sony or any other company in the United States could ever expect. Stolen e-mails between top Sony executives reviewing upcoming stars were leaked online. Information about upcoming movies, and the stars to be cast was revealed to the public. Customer credit card information and passwords stolen, and that was just the initial attack that was intended to serve as a warning.

The hackers succeeded and Sony did pull the movie from its upcoming release date, but the reason was not the hackers. Movie theaters operate separately from Sony, and other movie making studios. In order for a movie to be released, a movie theater must agree to present it, or the movie will never be shown. When hackers got to Sony’s private information, movie theaters wanted the movie pulled to avoid having to deal with new cyber security issues. It was a safe play, versus getting into an all-out cyber war with experienced hackers.

Fighting a hack like this could be done by allocating a huge amount of funding towards cyber security. But most companies are wary on investing their capital on extensive cyber security, when negotiating with the hackers and agreeing to their terms is much cheaper.

Sony tried to get the movie theaters on their side before Christmas day, which is when the movie was supposed to be released. After the initial e-mail threatening Sony to pull the movie and revealing all of the secrets leaked online, another e-mail came to Sony from the hackers mentioning how no further hacks will take place if Sony doesn’t go through with releasing the movie.

The FBI released a statement accusing North Korea of the cyber-attacks after an investigation took place.