Sony Security Breach Goes From Bad to Worse

Published: December 8, 2014 7:53 PM /

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Sony PlayStation Hacking

According to The Telegraph, Sony appears to have saved and stored thousands of company passwords in slew of files that all resided within a directory labeled "Passwords". In all tens of thousands of documents have been made public containing everything from full length unreleased movies, employee records and an incredible amount of internal corporate information.

The recent string of attacks against Sony, PlayStation Network on Monday and the Sony Pictures Entertainment servers just days before, is proving to be incredibly embarrassing with new leaked details showcasing exactly how absurdly easy it was for hackers to bypass security protocols to get access to crucial company data. The breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment systems that occurred last week resulted in hackers obtaining sensitive information on tens of thousands of employees and associates of the company. These records include highly sensitive personal details such as the Social Security numbers, home addresses and the salary of current employees. Sony apparently stored all passwords to all corporate systems, social media logins and service account details under a single directory. The Wall Street Journal also claims that the personal details of past employees and even freelance contractors that worked for Sony are part of the files seized by the hackers. According to The Telegraph there are also several well-known celebrities that are victims of the digital attack. Buzzfeed is reporting that the individual files storing passwords and account logins were, very much like the directory label would entail, titled as passwords. Examples include "Server Privileged Access.xlsx", "PASSWORDS Master-1 (3).xls" and "payroll password email.pdf".

Variety has reported that unreleased movies produced by Sony Pictures Entertainment have recently been leaked online to pirated media websites by hackers. The films include "Fury", "Mr Turner", Still Alice" and "To Write Love on Her Arms". Variety is also reporting that the group of hackers has referred to itself as the "Guardians of Peace" or at times abbreviated to "GOP". Yesterday TechRaptor writer Lucy Walcott covered the outage of the PlayStation Network caused by the hacker group Lizard Squad. The attack was perpetrated during the PlayStation Experience event hosted by Sony over the weekend. The same group is also responsible for taking Xbox Live offline.

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Born in Niagara Falls, the northeast edge of the rust belt, amateur author and audiophile Thomas Nelson has exhausted almost two decades as an elitist PC… More about Thomas