Sony Pictures Entertainment reportedly at the receiving end of a hacking attack on Monday which left all of its computer systems inaccessible.
According to reports, the first indication of the hacking attack appeared on Monday morning when the company’s employees found an image of a red, glowing skeleton on their computer systems, along with a series of URL addresses, and a threatening message from a hacker collective group that referred itself by the monicker #GOP.
“Hacked By #GOP Warning: We’ve already warned you, and this is just a beginning. We continue till our request be met. We’ve obtained all your internal data, including your secrets and top secrets. If you don’t obey us, we’ll release data shown below to the world. Determine what will you do till November the 24th, 11:00 PM (GMT),” the threatening message reads.
The image also shows five links to zip files which might include confidential documents from an employee server, potentially including sensitive records and password files, although we would highly suggest readers not to follow any of these zip file URLs as they could possibly contain malware that might infect your computer.
As a preventive measure, the company’s employees have been ordered to turn off their computers as well as disable Wi-Fi on all mobile devices.
One of company’s employee told Deadline, “We are down, completely paralyzed.”
Sony Pictures Entertainment spokesperson Jean Guerin said that they are investigating an IT matter.
Meanwhile, Variety.com’s report, citing a source at Sony Pictures, revealed that the company has told its employees that the issue could take anywhere from one day to three weeks to recover from, and that employees have been warned not to connect to the company’s corporate network or to check their work mails.
