The Sony Hack
The Sony Hack
Cyber-attack has been a global issue for a long time now and still among the troublesome issue in most organizations. Cybersecurity targets on information technology systems, network systems as well as infrastructures according to (AlDairi, 2017). Some of the most common cyber-attacks include the drive-by attack, password attack, Denial of service and distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). The paper discusses the “Sony Hack”.
The Sony cyber-attack happened on the eve of thanksgiving in 2014 where on twenty fourth of November, the computer systems of Sony pictures ceased working abruptly (Haggard, and Lindsay, 2015). The attackers hacked the email systems and erased the hard drive leading to loss of data where sensitive information about the company was breached and released to the press and the public. The Sony hack revealed private information concerning the internal fights between the Sony executives on the production of jobs movie where the mega in fights were scattered on private emails of the executives. Additionally, the information about launching a music label was leaked as well as the organized campaigns of the company against Google which was sensitive and confidential.
The most confidential data leaked was the sensitive data of Sony employees where the company had almost forty-seven thousand employees who had private accounts on the computers as well as some of the celebrities working with the company such as Judd Apatow and Sylvester Stallone that have affected their identity and reputation (Haggard, and Lindsay, 2015). The hack affected the company’s integrity especially on the leaked information of employees as well as the confidential information about the company with the coordinated anti-piracy efforts as well as the campaign against Google.
The attack was conducted by North Korea’s cyber-attack squad according to the FBI targeting the interview which was not just a movie compared to the North Korean state of poverty. The tactics used by the attackers were the same and a bit different from the once used in Seoul in a bank and infrastructure attack (Haggard, and Lindsay, 2015). The similarity between the Seoul and Sony attack was the code used, methods used in data deletion as well as the encryption algorithms. The Sony cyber-attack caused great damage to the infrastructure, employees and the entire company’s integrity. The total damage topped up to one hundred million dollars which affected the company. Employees were threatened by the hackers claiming that the company did not put cybersecurity measures to protect the private information in the leaked emails.
The “Sony Hack” was considered as the messiest attack which called upon Helpance from president Barrack Obama and the United States authority as well as most organizations urged the company to take strict measures against attacks in the future. The company had vulnerabilities on its website which were not yet identified. Through the vulnerability, the attackers stole the administrator’s password where information was accessed. I would advise the company to first identify the vulnerability of cyber-attack in their company, for instance, the website used.
The website is prone to attacks especially through sending emails and advertisements to employees leading to the malware download (AlDairi, 2017). The use of strict passwords is important as well as limiting the sharing of passwords would have protected the company from the hack. Additionally, knowledge about cybersecurity is important to both the employees and the organization, for instance, learning about tactics used by attackers especially in Seoul would have saved the company from the hack. For example, the product used to delete the hard disk known as the raw disk was the one used by system administrators for the maintenance of IT systems.
The Sony hack was a mega cybersecurity issue that affected the integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of the company as well as employees. The North Korean cyber attackers used the same skills used in Seoul to conduct the attack. The attack was primarily conducted to stop the interview movie which was a comedy on North Korean assassination. The attack could have been prevented through training and having the required knowledge about cyber-attacks and how to [rotect companies data from the breach for instance by having complex passwords, protecting the companies website from ads as well as learning from the Seoul attack on banks.
References
AlDairi, A. (2017). Cyber security attacks on smart cities and associated mobile technologies. Procedia Computer Science, 109, 1086-1091.
Haggard, S., & Lindsay, J. R. (2015). North Korea and the Sony hack: Exporting instability through cyberspace.
