Behind the Scenes at Sony as Hacking Crisis Unfolded Wall Street Journal (12/31/14) Fritz, Ben; Yadron, Danny; Schwartzel, Erich Sony executives and their staffers have been scrambling ever since the companys recent cyberattack, taking steps both small and major. The day after employees discovered that company e-mail was unusable, for instance, senior executives put in motion a decidedly old-style communication network: a phone tree, in which updates on the hack were relayed from person to person. The payroll department made use of an old machine to manually cut paychecks. Among the most helpful steps taken was the studios unearthing of a cache of BlackBerrys, which still worked because they send and receive e-mail via their own servers. Hackers hadnt simply stolen data from Sony. They had erased it, rendering the studios entire computer system unusable. The Thanksgiving weekend was especially intense, with Sonys IT department scrambling to get even the most basic systems back online. FBI agents worked nearby, as did investigators from FireEye Inc., a cybersecurity firm that deploys teams to companies that have been hacked. The hackers sought to create maximum chaos. One week after the hack, for instance, they leaked five Sony movies onto the Internet, in addition to thousands of internal documents and the Social Security numbers and other personal information of more than 47,000 people, including a handful of movie stars. Within a week, investigators had started to suspect that North Korea had a hand in the breach due to hints in the attack code -- a charge North Korea has denied. People involved in the investigation say North Korea remains the leading suspect as opposed to some unknown disgruntled ex-employee as others have theorized. If the companys systems remain secure, Sony Pictures network is on pace to be fully operational again within two months.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 18:35:04 +0000
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