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SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT is attempting to disrupt torrent sites which are offering downloads of sensitive data exposed during a cyber attack in late November.
Re/Code is reporting that Sony is using Amazon Web Services, the online retailer’s cloud computing service, to carry out the counterattack.
By using hundreds of computers in Asia, it’s performing a Denial of Service attack on services where its stolen data is available.
This tactic was used during the early days of file sharing by media companies as a way of combating internet movie and music piracy as a way of slowing down downloads and limit access.
A group called Guardians of Peace claimed to have stolen under 100 terabytes (roughly 100,000 GB) of data from Sony Pictures. This included financial information, budgets, payroll data, internal emails and feature films and portions of this data has been slowly leaked on to public file-sharing sites like PasteBin.
Some of the files leaked included private correspondence between producers and executives which featured disputes over the Steve Jobs movie that went to Universal, an attempt to get Spider-Man into Captain America 3, and Community star Joel McHale asking for a discount on a Sony TV after Sony canceled the show (before it was picked up by Yahoo).
Sony is working with the FBI to try and track down those responsible for the attacks, where one official said that the malware used would have gone past most online defences.
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So DDoS attacks are valid legal tactics now? That’s an interesting development.
There’s never actually been anything illegal about DDoS attacks as far as I know. All you’re doing is overloading a server with requests. It happens naturally during high traffic periods on certain websites.
Yeah but there’s been people prosecuted in the past for doing it and have been banned from using a computer for a number of years after serving jail time even though anyone with basic computer literacy could do it.
Yeah, it’s not great. Prosecuting for DDoS attacks is a very grey legal area. It depends on what country you’re in and what country the servers are in. But it’s pretty rough that apparentely it’s legitimate for big corporations to openly do it.
Theres something extremely worrying about a multinational company being allowed to act in a way that would land an individual in jail.
Sony breaks the law to stop law breakers, really????
As the say goes “All’s fair in love and war”
If anyone else did that they would be prosecuted.
Glen, the Chinese, Russians and North Koreans do it all the time and you won’t say boo to them.
The US are the biggest offenders of all prob even more so than the three countries you mentioned combined.
Proof Declan .. Proof !!
There’s no proof that the Earth revolves around the sun, we still accept it as a fact.
Evidence isn’t the same as proof Jayo. Actual proof only exists in the world of Maths.
It’s also interesting that you chose visual evidence. That was the exact same evidence that was used to promote geocentrism. Because the sun moves across the sky and seemingly rotates around the other side of the Earth.
So by using Amazon AWS to DDOS, are Sony not breaking Amazon’s Terms Of Service?
Water metres
Sony are now above the Law? that’s interesting.
DDOS attacks are illegal in both the US and UK.
US: Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
UK: Police and Justice Act 2006
Good to see that Sony is above the law. Sony is based in Japan however where are the Amazon servers they are using to launch their attacks based?
The computers are in Asia. It says so right there in the article.
Good move by Sony.
So Tap
Or whatever you are calling yourself now. you p!ss and moan about criminality in the ranks of Sinn Fein but you are ok with criminality in big business. You’re really just a hypocritical troll aren’t you Lyons !!
Sony is working with the FBI – that is good enough for me. Sony was attacked by criminals. Irish Shinner types think that criminality is acceptable behaviour and cannot understand a counter attack.
And now Sony is criminal in their response !!
And glen defended the hack on sony in the first place. Didn’t you glen and don’t deny it.
Declan
I thought you were giving out that I wreck your head and I suggested for the sake of your sanity that you wouldn’t reply to my comments … This isn’t helping Declan
But since you did who am I too let you down pal!! If I pirated movie happens to land on my memory stick I’m not going to complain … Fury is a great film !
I suspect there will be backlash against both Sony & Amazon for this.
Closing the gates after the horses have bolted.
Is it just me or does this have the feeling of ‘much ado about nothing’ to it?
It’s just you.
fvk off Journal – put my comment back!
Won’t be surprised if the police raid on tpb is linked to this, damn them!
Look elsewhere,it’s still all there. Just not as convenient as TPB was.
In fairness Sony have had it rough over the past few years they’ve been targeted many times by hackers . I really can’t see how these hackers can justify these kind of attacks. I just don’t understand why Sony can be breached so easily they need to do something about their security.
have your say