Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far • Hacker News Board

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#51

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 10:55 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #27

chx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, if I am a majority shareholder then I will read the riot act to the company I hold a majority in after they lose $171M on shitty security. Also, http://www.sony.com/SCA/who-we-are/our-businesses.shtml lists all these so there is some cohesion. AFAIK there's no such Virgin supercompany.

Richard Branson is Virgin's sole-proprietor supercompany. :) But yes, that's true—the investors would be mad at SCE. But would that, in turn, make them think of pulling aside SPE to give them the same talk? SPE isn't even doing anything involving running a public-facing web service; why would the investors presume they'd be at risk? It'd be like YCombinator calling in all their current batch of startups to give them…

>It'd be like YCombinator calling in all their current batch of startups to give them a lesson on finances because one of them screwed up their bookkeeping. //

If they "screw up" was criminally negligent and had a cost of the order of $100s of millions I could certainly see YC doing that, couldn't you?

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#52

Post by gadders » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 10:57 AM UTC

msantos wrote: post #36

mintplant wrote: post #10

An article on The Hollywood Reporter has some more information on this, including perspectives from sources elsewhere within the industry: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sony-hack-studio-secur... "It's changing our business," says one producer of its impact on Hollywood. "From now on, money and time will be allocated by studios to deal with this full-time." ...as it should have been already, given how big and…

> "It's changing our business," says one producer of its impact on Hollywood. "From now on, money and time will be allocated by studios to deal with this full-time." Shame that most of Sony's Finance and HR are blaming the IT department - so bloody typical! "Everyone’s looking to the IT department to say, ‘How did you let this happen?'" said one employee in Sony Pictures’ finance department." http://fusion.net/story/…

I work in an IT department. Pretty sure IT Security would be the responsibility of somebody here.

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#53

Post by jdimov » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 10:58 AM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #48

doctorpangloss wrote: post #34

Many people suggest that startups not over-optimize on issues like security and performance when it's not their core business. The same could be said of Sony: empathize a little with them. Sony Pictures pays a lot of creative people. Maybe they should have seen the hack coming, but like the PSN outage this story will be maybe a paragraph in a Wikipedia article years from now. Even one great film could be watched by p…

Many people suggest that startups not over-optimize on issues like security and performance when it's not their core business. And that's a fucking stupid thing to say in those cases, so it's a fucking stupid thing to say here. Things like security and performance should be given. This is akin to arguing that small restaurants shouldn't care about food safety, or that small construction firms shouldn't worry about bu…

When it comes to start-ups it's not stupid - it's wise. The food safety analogy is inappropriate. Security is about risk management. Low risks do not justify high expenses.

When it comes to a company with hundreds of millions in revenues, however, they have clearly underestimated the risks and have been irresponsible.

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#54

Post by leoc » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 11:02 AM UTC

deciplex wrote: post #40

dagw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Korea as a country might be behind the technological curve, but several reports indicate the the North Korean Army cyber warfare division is pretty well funded and advanced. There is a huge divide between the day to day realities of the average NK citizen and the realities of the upper echelons.

Who makes up the cyber-warfare division? If I traveled in time back to 1850 with a billion dollars worth of gold bullion, I couldn't hire a single black hat with it. So a few kids of the party elite get to go to nice schools abroad - where are the rest coming from? Or does DPRK have a shit-hot education system in spite of literally other thing about the country being godawful and totally backwards? If so it's the fir…

Apparently North Korea has fairly substantial IT (and animation) outsourcing businesses: this paywalled A¢M article http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/8/153816-inside-the-hermi... claims 10,000 workers in IT outsourcing. The great majority of the population may be living as peasants, but that's not the case universally.

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#55

Post by Narishma » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 11:03 AM UTC

higherpurpose wrote: post #16

You'd think they would've learned a thing or two after they were made the hackers' pinata the last time around. Sony continues to come up as the poster-boy company for weak security.

That was a different Sony company that was hacked. I don't think they share much in common except the Sony name.

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#56

Post by probably_wrong » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 11:11 AM UTC

doctorpangloss wrote: post #34

Many people suggest that startups not over-optimize on issues like security and performance when it's not their core business. The same could be said of Sony: empathize a little with them. Sony Pictures pays a lot of creative people. Maybe they should have seen the hack coming, but like the PSN outage this story will be maybe a paragraph in a Wikipedia article years from now. Even one great film could be watched by p…

> The film industry regards Sony Pictures as the major studio that still takes risks on edgy comedies and dramas. They are known to respect directors more than the other majors.

I'm not in touch with the film industry, so could you link me to a discussion about this somewhere? I find the idea of Sony taking risks hard to reconcile with the mess that was "The Amazing Spider-Man 2", but as I only know the comic book fan side of things I could use some extra background.

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#57

Post by jarcane » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 11:16 AM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #56

doctorpangloss wrote: post #34

Many people suggest that startups not over-optimize on issues like security and performance when it's not their core business. The same could be said of Sony: empathize a little with them. Sony Pictures pays a lot of creative people. Maybe they should have seen the hack coming, but like the PSN outage this story will be maybe a paragraph in a Wikipedia article years from now. Even one great film could be watched by p…

> The film industry regards Sony Pictures as the major studio that still takes risks on edgy comedies and dramas. They are known to respect directors more than the other majors. I'm not in touch with the film industry, so could you link me to a discussion about this somewhere? I find the idea of Sony taking risks hard to reconcile with the mess that was "The Amazing Spider-Man 2", but as I only know the comic book fa…

Thing about that is, the movie business is all about risk deference sometimes: making a dumb obvious move now, so you can afford to take the bigger risk later.

And remember too that while the sequels of both SM film series have been largely crap, the originals were big risks in some respect. The first Spider-Man gave a massive budget to a director largely known only for low-budget shlock, and the ASM reboot meant deciding only a few scant years after the last one to completely dump and start over a franchise that was circling the drain.

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#58

Post by dagw » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 11:17 AM UTC

leoc wrote: post #54

deciplex wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who makes up the cyber-warfare division? If I traveled in time back to 1850 with a billion dollars worth of gold bullion, I couldn't hire a single black hat with it. So a few kids of the party elite get to go to nice schools abroad - where are the rest coming from? Or does DPRK have a shit-hot education system in spite of literally other thing about the country being godawful and totally backwards? If so it's the fir…

Apparently North Korea has fairly substantial IT (and animation) outsourcing businesses: this paywalled A¢M article http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/8/153816-inside-the-hermi... claims 10,000 workers in IT outsourcing. The great majority of the population may be living as peasants, but that's not the case universally.

Just found a link to the other article I read on the subject. http://h30499.www3.hp.com/hpeb/attachments/hpeb/off-by-on-so...

It focuses more on cyber warfare, but does cover quite a bit about CS education in North Korea.

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#59

Post by alecco » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 11:31 AM UTC

gadders wrote: post #52

msantos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's changing our business," says one producer of its impact on Hollywood. "From now on, money and time will be allocated by studios to deal with this full-time." Shame that most of Sony's Finance and HR are blaming the IT department - so bloody typical! "Everyone’s looking to the IT department to say, ‘How did you let this happen?'" said one employee in Sony Pictures’ finance department." http://fusion.net/story/…

I work in an IT department. Pretty sure IT Security would be the responsibility of somebody here.

Yeah, who is routinely ignored by the rest because they are too busy with deadlines or something.

Re: Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don't Know So Far

#60

Post by _delirium » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 11:34 AM UTC

yabatopia wrote: post #26

It's Sony Pictures Entertainment that got hacked, not Sony. They're completely separate companies, yet the media fails to recognize that. Very annoying and confusing, it's almost deliberately.

"Completely separate companies" is overstating it a bit. Operationally separate business units of the same company might be closer to the mark. Their "About" page doesn't even try to describe them independently, saying only that "Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation." And the footer links directly to sony.com.