Hackers are no longer daunted by big company names with likely hard-to-infiltrate systems. It looks like Sony, despite being an entertainment giant, has allegedly fallen victim to a ransomware attack, and from a new ransomware group, no less.
Hacker Group Intends to Sell
Sony's cyberattack incident was first reported back on September 25 by a cybersecurity publication, stating that Sony was attacked by a new group of hackers called Ransomed.vc, who had only started its operations in the same month.
The threat actors were said to have access to several files from the company, including Java files, a screenshot of Sony's internal log-in page, an internal presentation about test bench details, and around 6,000 more files on a document tree.
With the 6,000 files alone, Sony could land in a whole lot of trouble, as it contains various documentation such as build log files, Java resources, and HTML data, which as reported by Kotaku, was written in Japanese.
Ransomed.vc boasted that they have "successfully compromised all of Sony's systems," adding that due to Sony not wanting to pay, they will not ransom the data and sell them instead. In all caps, the ransomware group posted: "DATA IS FOR SALE. WE ARE SELLING IT."
Despite that, the hacker group is giving Sony a chance to pony up. They provided contact details in case the company decides to change their minds about the ransom. They will have until tomorrow, September 28 before Ransomed.vc posts the data in public.
It's unlikely that the ransomware group will post all the stolen data, especially if they plan to sell them instead. However, that's not any better. Suffice it to say that Sony needs to upgrade its cybersecurity as this is not the first time it has been breached by hackers.
As for Ransomed.vc, reports say that the hacker group may be based out of Russia and Ukraine. While the group is new to the scene, speculations say that it has connections to previous dark web forums and groups as well.
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A Bigger Mess with PlayStation
PlayStation, owned by the entertainment giant, also suffered a massive cyberattack more than a decade ago. The company was not able to contain the situation and was forced to announce that approximately 77 million users were affected by the breach.
The hackers stole data from the PlayStation Network which includes names, addresses, email addresses, birth dates, usernames, passwords, logins, security questions, and more, as reported by The Guardian.
The incident caused an outage in the network where players were locked out for a week. One of the biggest issues is that PlayStation Network holds credit card details as well. While the company said there was no evidence of it, they still advised caution to the affected users.
To put into context just how bad it was for Sony, the company had to explain to Congress what had happened. Sony also tried to make up for the incident by giving away games and even monetary compensation.
