“It’s been different for everyone,” she said. She was upbeat, optimistic, even after finding out her bank account information had been traded on a black market website. She was worried her identity had also leaked. She imagined her private information on some forum somewhere and shuddered. She had a right to be concerned,” John Biggs reports for TechCrunch. “She works for Sony Pictures. She said she’s now working in an office on lock-down, a throw-back to an earlier time when the Internet wasn’t around. ‘We are stuck in 1992 over here,’ she said.”
“That is what a major corporate security breach sounds like: the squeal of a fax machine and the low murmur of co-workers now required to talk to each other instead of depending on email or instant messages,” Biggs reports. “Unfortunately, some internal systems weren’t quite up to snuff in the first place, leading to more problems. Our source recalls seeing computers that hadn’t been back up in a decade. That means they are still running old, potentially insecure software on old hardware. ‘A lot of people aren’t tech-savvy in this business,’ she said.”
“All is not lost,” Biggs reports. “‘We’re mostly a fully-functioning office. We’re going about or daily business. We just got our voicemail back. Everyone is a little calmer now after the initial shock. A couple of people had their computers removed but people using Macs were fine,’ she said. She said most work is done on iPads and iPhones. An emergency email system is in place but it does not allow attachments… She was quiet a moment. She had to go. After all, she was talking to me on her only office machine, her personal iPhone. And she had work to do.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, wonder what type of computers they were using that got hacked to bits?
[Attribution: 9to5Mac. Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Related article:
Leaked Sony e-mails reveal Aaron Sorkin wanted Tom Cruise as Steve Jobs – December 9, 2014
The Interview, the movie that finally killed Windows.
Your having a private interview with Windows? We want you to take them out.
Take them out to lunch?
No, take them out.
Take them out to dinner and a movie?
No . . . take them out.
Oh, take them out to an online shopping spree and a visit to my online bank?
No, TAKE-THEM-OUT!
Oh, we WISH Sucker! We wish.
Can you imagine Sony having to buy a bunch of Apple products! Humiliating, in SO many ways.
Karma…
Especially since anyone reading the security posts over the last few years has seen this umpteen times.
Not really. Sony and Apple have similar outlooks in many ways. It’s unfortunate that Sony is hobbled with running windows, but their design teams are pretty decent.
Steve liked Sony for a reason.
Steve actually liked Sony’s founder Akio Morita for a reason. He WAS Sony and they’ve been lost ever since he left as CEO and died.
unike
Yeah Steve Jobs was in many ways Apple, but Steve had the foresight to instill in his troops proper instruction & philosophy in the ways of tech design and ecosystem after he was gone. The posthumous results at Apple speak for themselves.
Wonder what would have happened if Sony had taken up the offer of cooperation even making computers together as SJ suggested. Sony didn’t think Apple was Influential big or important enough for them to ally with. How things change.
Indeed. Those you look down your nose at today you might be looking up to at a distant lofty height tomorrow. But then it’s too late.
Sony rootkit karma. ‘Scuse me while I dab my crocodile tears.
For those with short memories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
There really should be a big fat book studying the effects of what I call Marketing-As-Management on companies as they decay and die. I can write up the chapter on Kodak. Who wants to research the chapter on Sony?
Kodak issn’t really like Sony. Kodak excelled in a business that simply died due to technological improvements (digital cameras). Much like horse carriage builders after Henry Ford mass produced the automobile — still made a great product, but everyone moved on to something better.
Kodak’s problem was not the digital camera, it was the smartphone. Kodak invented the digital camera, and understood it more than people think. Kodak was mostly a consumer camera company. When digital cameras became affordable they jumped in the market and was inventive with software and hardware that made prints from digital. They revised their strategy quickly in the early 00’s when they saw digital expanding faster than they expected.
Then came the iPhone. A phone that was easy to take a picture with, had screen large enough to show the photo to others, and easily downloaded to a computer. There was nothing like this before. Than Apple started allowing 3rd party apps and a lot of photo editing apps came out. Of course Android copied the idea and very quickly most of Kodak’s market had a camera in their pocket. People could easily share their photo so the print business all but died. Kodak could build a camera with better specks, but not with editing software and several ways to share. Kodak invented the consumer camera and made their money off what it took to make a photograph. Digital cameras did not kill the actual photograph, iPhones did.
Kodak – Winds of Change
I worked for a branch of Kodak quite some time ago. They had plenty of warning, but they resisted new technology and kept engineers working on their old outdated systems. Kodak could still be a strong company if they’d realized that times change and you can’t protect an obsolete business model. It was management by head-in-the-sand.
My perspective is of someone working inside Kodak when all of this was going down. I worked with professional imaging film and moved over to working with professional digital photography software. I got to watch ‘Marketing-As-Management’ first hand, thus my obsession with the subject.
The Kodak corrosion problem involved a lot of factors. One of them clearly was the idiotic marketing inertia of depending on the great old cash cow of film, even when the future was screaming bloody murder at them from WITHIN Kodak. The company literally owned the original digital sensor technology. But what they did with it, thanks to Marketing-As-Management was fritter it away. Like idiots, Kodak shoved all their knowledge about camera design and manufacture walk out their doors into early retirement. The same happened with a lot of their professional imaging technology. They had to scramble and bumble around for years to fill the voids they themselves had created inside the company.
I moved over to working with digital imaging because I had the talent as well as half-a-brain in my head to know the future, despite my having years of film photography study on my resumé. Once I was there, I realized just how poorly the company was being run whereby their digital imaging division was treated with distain, hyperbolic pressure, chaotic direction and short-sightedness.
The tales I can tell. I’ll stop there, until we get a contract to write the book…
I am beginning to understand the strain on your sanity that your work life has imposed. Thank god your critical thinking skills saved you from a more ignoble end.
There are far better critical thinkers than myself. But I try. I’ve also had some terrific mentors along the way. Give a bow Hannagh! That’s a whole chapter of my never-to-be-written autobiography, a tale to be told to put hyper kids to sleep at night. zzzzz
[I actually did that once. I attacked them with a set of Ambrose Bierce ‘fractured fairytales’ he called ‘Fantastic Fables’. Despite thunder, lightning (look, I spelled it right!) and a stream of rainwater running down the middle of our our lean-to, I knocked them right out until morning! Attention parents.]
Never-to-be-written by you perhaps, but this great world abounds with fresh energy inspired by Homeric epics such as yours, to fuel future Iliads to inform generations yet to come of the battles waged by such as you to make the universe safe from idiocy.
We dream as one. 😉
The sad thing is that Kodak invented the digital camera. They failed to capitalize on that invention. Although, in their defense, they were way ahead of the market, at least the consumer market.
Sony Pictures, like all media production companies, have a large number of Macs in regular use.
Gee, think a little investment in Security would have been wise. Guess all those hacking movies Hollywood made was fantasy… Reality bites!
Arrogance of the King of the Mountain.
They trusted their boiling oil of Microsoft OS versions to defeat the hordes armed with crossbows & catapults, because they didn’t want to “spend the money” and have to admit to the King they didn’t know what they were doing.
I don’t know that I would call it arrogance. We humans seem to have a problem believing we need to act to prevent something before it happens. Rather, we wait for a catastrophe to occur, then we decide we must do something.
I doubt Sony is very different from most corporations — it has a competent IT department in place, reasonable security measures, etc. I mean, who would have thought Sony would be a big target for hackers? They’re not an obvious target like a government agency, bank, or retailer like Target.
Now throw in the fact that Sony appears to have been hacked by a concerted effort from a government, North Korea, which was pissed about their film. I don’t know that there really would have been enough security, firewalls, two-password protection systems, etc. to prevent North Korea from breaching Sony’s security. If Kim Jung Un ordered them to hack into Sony at all costs, it was going to happen.
Mind boggling that so many companies are still using Windows mess.
Don’t you LOVE the irony of IT doofuses claiming they want the most secure system while using the least secure POS OS? And they wonder why they have ZERO credibility and have risen to the ranks of the reviled.
While doofuses is acceptable, I prefer doofi as the plural of doofus.
While “doofuses” feels more satisfying, I stand corrected. 🙂
Well, I looked the word up. (Better late than never.)
Doofus is a real dictionary word, and the correct plural is doofuses.
Doofi can be intentionally used incorrectly for humor.
So… I stand corrected! :-0
Doofi works for me too. I have used it on occasion. Mangling the English language to creative effect is such fun!
in my office I use mac ( I’m in design ) and the rest use Dell. They have nothing but problems, but are afraid they won’t understand how to use Apple. I bet its similar situation
Fact is, most common operations are similar on the Mac & Windows. And when you are in applications they are mostly similar on both OSs & hence, not much of a learning curve.
Surprised that Sony used/approved an actual sitting dictator as the focal point of the assassination..
They easily could have changed the name/nation and the movie would not have drew the hacks.
Granted it’s a “comedy” but still..
One does have to wonder who would have approved a stupid, tasteless script about trying to assassinate a real person who has nuclear weapons and is mentally unstable.
Where are all the self righteous IT Dufusses NOW!? What GREAT recommendations those arrogant A-HOLES gave you. BOY OH BOY!!! did you save LOADS OF CASH$$$$$ buying those Windoze Licensees running those Visios. Just ponder arrogant greed mongers….. Did you make the right decisions when it came to procuring said technology? Answer: YOU CHOSE POORLY. Corporate, Arrogant, STUPIDITY. Sleep tight SONY. You best start ripping EVERY WinBlows PC outta there because your entire network is infected and there ain’t NO WAY you can fix it other than PULLING THE PLUG on everything WinDOH!! Good fckn’ LUCK.
Yeah, right now it looks like $40M down the drain. You could have bought a lot of really good, secure equipment for $40M.
MAN! SONY is truly in a world of hurt. NO amount of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ is going to fix their problem.
I have yet to peruse the mainline media feeds for “THE MAIN REASON” this happened. MicroSloth, with their, OH SO omnipotent WindBlows OS is the root cause of these security breaches. Along with said Corporate, Arrogant, STUPIDITY. RUN quick! IT Duffusses… RUN! go get that patch and fix it….. stick your little finger in the dike… you MORONS!
I’m guessing they were rocking Vaio’s running Vista.
I’m guessing they were rocking Vaio’s running Vista.
√ Killing email attachments – Can’t send around malware.
√ Don’t use Windows boxes – Malware magnets disconnected.
√ Stay off the Internet – 1994 (to be precise) but helps.
√ Kill the LAN – Again, can’t send around malware
But using Macs: Fine for NO infections (but there are active Mac malware around!). BUT! Macs can be malware carriers. I found a bunch of Windows malware crap stuck in spam this past week! So be careful!
Helpful for this situation is the donationware ClamXav, which I highly recommend. Get the better enabled version directly from the developer, Mark Allan. It includes Sentry, which is a real time scanner of designated drive folders, such as your Mail or Downloads. And it doesn’t hog your CPU. Donationware worth the donation:
http://www.clamxav.com
[Disclaimer: I do not work for or receive compensation for promoting ClamXav but I am net friends with Mark Allan.]
BTW: What sharp and nasty irony for Sony, manufacturers of the VAIO computer line, that they can’t safely use Windows gear at their own offices. Slap slap!
The “internet” has been around since 1970s… you are referring to the World Wide Web, which was created and successfully tested on December 20, 1990.
Yeah… Remember…. Al Gore invented the World Wide Web. Right? Rolling eyes.
Remember, he didn’t say he “invented” it. He said he “created” it. Invention is for mortals, creation is the stuff of deities.
I entirely agree. But considering the level of comprehension of these people at Sony, why would they say ‘1992’? The ‘Internet’ became a public phenomenon with the arrival of Netscape, the first humane web browser, in 1995. Or so say I.
Please try to keep current-Sony sold off it’s personal pc line.
they no longer make any Pc.
And that affects this situation how?
Sony should anonymously make ” interview” available all over the net .. For the whole world to see for free!
Yes. Instead of cowering to the North Koreans, they should leak it to the web and give a big middle finger to that little fat fuck dictator.
When U read the reports on the Sony hack there is NOWHERE mentioned what kind of environment they utilize! No word on M$ but had it been macs you’d be sure it had been pointed out in every line. M$ has a firm dollar-grip on the media… Call it bribes.
Don’t get too hung up on that skeleton picture. That wasn’t the hack. It was just the aftermath.