Sony Pictures Entertainment looks to North Korea for cyber attack source

[SoleSurvivor]

Sony Pictures Entertainment looks to North Korea for cyber attack source

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 30 November, 2014, 5:36am
UPDATED : Sunday, 30 November, 2014, 5:36am

Reuters in Washington

Sony Pictures' computer system went down on Monday.

Sony Pictures Entertainment is looking into whether hackers working on behalf of North Korea might be responsible for a cyber attack that knocked out the studio's computer network last week, the technology news site Re/code reported.

Sony and security consultants were investigating the possibility that Chinese hackers carried out the actual attack.

The attack occurred a month before Sony Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp, is to release The Interview. The movie is a comedy about two journalists who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The Pyongyang government denounced the film as "undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war" in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.

Representatives of the North Korean mission to the United Nations could not immediately be reached for comment yesterday.

Sony Pictures' computer system went down on Monday. Before screens went dark, they displayed a red skull and the phrase "Hacked By #GOP", which reportedly stands for Guardians of Peace, the Los Angeles Times said. The hackers also warned they would release "secrets" stolen from the Sony servers, the Times said.