Chapter 4, Problem 1OC

Program Plan Intro

SPE attack:

In 24^th November, 2014, a group called “GOP (Guardians of Peace)” had successfully attacked the SPE (Sony Pictures Entertainment) company.

• The hackers obtained several personal information about 47,000 SPE employees, and their emails, salaries, and complete copies of unreleased Sony films and so on.
• Initially the GOP had released information about digital copies of Sony films, which had been released.
• The main motivation of this attack is to get links to the future release of the film named “The Interview”. In this movie, they set up an interview with the North Korea’s leader “Kim Jong Un”.

Explanation of Solution

The SPE’s response:

• After Sony had realized the attack, they shut down their whole network on 25^th November, 2014.
• Also, they pulled the theatrical release of the movie “The Interview” on 17^th December, 2014.

Analyzing the above response:

“No”, the Sony’s response is not adequate to the data breach for following reason:

• The above attack is a type of “cyber vandalism”, and it is not an act of war. Hence, the Sony should defy the attackers rather than pulling the “The Interview” film was a mistake.