Just when you thought Sony Pictures Entertainment could suffer no more humiliation as a result of last year’s devastating cyber attack by hackers thought to be linked to North Korea, there was a new development today that could lead to further embarrassing disclosures.
WikiLeaks Publishes Archive of Documents Stolen in Sony Attack
The controversial site says the trove of data “belongs in the public domain.”
Vjeran Pavic for Re/code
WikiLeaks, the site that has disclosed numerous sensitive documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and confidential diplomatic cables, today announced the creation of a search portal containing all the documents and emails stolen from Sony.
Want to read email exchanges between actor-director Seth Rogen and former studio head Amy Pascal over the changes made to “The Interview” intended to soothe the nerves of CEO Kaz Hirai? How about the leaked report by Sony’s onetime auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers disclosing gaps in how Sony monitored its network for possible breaches by hackers? All the documents in the trove have been indexed so they’re searchable.
In a statement explaining the project, WikiLeaks described the Sony archives as offering “rare insight into the inner workings of a large, secretive multinational corporation.”
Sony was not happy to have its corporate dirty laundry out in the open yet again: “The cyber attack on Sony Pictures was a malicious criminal act, and we strongly condemn the indexing of stolen employee and other private and privileged information on WikiLeaks,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “The attackers used the dissemination of stolen information to try to harm SPE and its employees, and now WikiLeaks regrettably is assisting them in that effort. We vehemently disagree with WikiLeaks’ assertion that this material belongs in the public domain and will continue to fight for the safety, security and privacy of our company and its more than 6,000 employees.”
The cyber attack on Sony was made public on Nov. 24 when reports emerged that its internal corporate network had been crippled by a group calling itself the Guardians of Peace. Over the course of the next three weeks, the attacks escalated, with numerous disclosures of sensitive corporate data on both its business plans and the personal information of its employees, as well as video files of five films.
Investigators in the U.S. linked the attack to North Korea. The country had publicly condemned Sony’s production of “The Interview,” a crude comedy about two bumbling TV reporters who land an interview with the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and are subsequently recruited by the CIA to assassinate him.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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