An alleged 27GB Sony Pictures data dump. 65 PlayStation web servers. One baffling mystery

Sony PlayStation website servers were used to distribute a 27.78GB archive potentially containing sensitive data swiped from Sony Pictures computers, it's claimed. Until early on Tuesday afternoon, San Francisco time, more than 60 systems seeding the archive on the BitTorrent network appeared to be virtual servers in the …

[Tapeador]

Honeypot thesis

sound pretty weak. The big firms know that to have proper markets in creative intellectual property once again, then they'll need ordinary bods onside in fights against the big filesharers.

[Mark 85]

On a side note....

It's also being reported that something the personal data (names, addresses, SSN's, etc.) of some 8000 past and present employees were swiped. Whoever did it apparently does now own Sony and it's employees.

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a Class Hack…

Will Sony come around to the way of thinking of some small business owners.... That always being connected in today's tech world is a bloody double-edged sword…?

[mr.K]

Troll

I like Sony as a manufacturer, mostly. I am not a big consumer of electronics, but I am very very picky. Of the products I have owned or been exposed to via friends or family that I think are made with thought and quality, all are Sony. It really feels like their engineers never brute force themselves around a problem, and while powerful inside their design try hard to tone it down.

Anyway, when it comes to security Sony feels like a troll. Nearly literally, the troll from some fantasy world hired to keep folks out or in. Big, brutish, can crush you with it's finger, but easily fooled and can, in an attempt to catch you, level to the ground whatever it is you were not allowed to enter. Also its literacy on the law is quite low on the count that its literacy is quite low and that it does not really see the benefit in obeying any.

On this count I try my hardest to find any product that isn't Sony when I need something new.

[John Tserkezis]

So... If I understand correctly...

Sony not only got caught with its pants down, its arse cheeks were suitably spread as well?

[RankingRoger]

Re: So... If I understand correctly...

No, that is what this non news wants you to think.

There is not a single but of anything news in here,, unknowns, guesswork and speculation

[YetAnotherLocksmith]

Re: So... If I understand correctly...

It's hardly guesswork.

Sony got hacked big time, the hackers stole the keys to the company cloud servers too, and hosted the stolen files there. Once they realised, they got them all taken down at the same time.

The only "guesswork" is if it was done intentionally by Sony or not. And I'm going with "Not".

The GOP are showing that they've also totally compromised the PlayStation Network. Again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking News

Sony has just changed its cloud server passwords from "Password" to "PASSWORD".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Breaking News

Nah, they've had the SecBods in.... its now P4ssw0rd ;-)

[Hellcat]

Re: Breaking News

Should have got a security consultant in...

P4ssw0rd!

[rvt]

Re: Breaking News

I had a sysadmin here at work literally creating passwords like!

[Dan 55]

FTFY

"At this point all the EC2 seeders are gone, and my best guess is that SCE were in fact owned by GOP."

[Anonymous Coward]

Which bittorrent client are the pictures from?

Icons are very familiar to me and look like someone is using KDE, but then I'm not familiar with any other DE but Windows.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Which bittorrent client are the pictures from?

It looks very much like Transmission on Mac OS

[Piro]

Transmission for Mac.

[juul]

Legal

If the content (sony movies) was downloaded from sony's servers, would it then become a legal action ?

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Legal

In most countries downloading is legal but uploading isn't.

[scrubber]

What goes around...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

Sweet, sweet karma.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What goes around...

Didn't know you were a Mariah Carey fan...

[Donkey Molestor X]

Re: What goes around...

> What goes around...

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

> Sweet, sweet karma.

The only silver lining off that whole kerfuffle was that it gave Mark Russinovitch some (much deserved) publicity and made me aware of the awesome SysInternals Suite.

[Anonymous Coward]

or because it could mean an inside job!

Insider Attacks are real.

[Velv]

Re: or because it could mean an inside job!

It could even be that North Korean spies infiltrated many organisations a long time ago, living as sleepers and just waiting for instructions from on high to unleash dastardly deeds.

Has Big Ben struck 13 recently???

[phuzz]

Wait a minute

Wait a sec, I thought that it was Sony Pictures that got hacked? Surely the Playstation servers are controlled by Sony Computer Entertainment, which is supposed to be a separate entity?

Have Sony been penetrated twice? (And I'm sure el Reg can make a good headline out of that one ;)

[Stretch]

Not Honeypots

They are Poisonpots, serving up corrupted torrents.

[Robert Helpmann??]

Research Purposes Only

Those flicks are still floating around file-sharing networks, and are now being seeded by so many people that download speeds are blisteringly fast.*

* Or so we have been told. By a friend... of a friend.

[Dylan Fahey]

Thank you for this article.

I've now added a custom block list with the 74. addresses to my peerblock list. Thanks.