It's not sexy, but it shows how bad things really are
The hacking of vast amounts of internal Sony data continues to generate headlines. On Dec. 8, the aliases of nearly a dozen Hollywood celebrities were leaked. That is in addition to unreleased films, employee salaries, scripts, and other sensitive documents spilling out online. The hackers responsible are reportedly making increasingly threatening demands on the company.
The episode is likely to continue given the sheer volume of data obtained. And that may be the most significant aspect of the leak itself. According to security expert Brian Krebs, the scope of the breach is enormous:
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]According to multiple sources, the intruders also stole more than 25 gigabytes of sensitive data on tens of thousands of Sony employees, including Social Security numbers, medical and salary information. What’s more, it’s beginning to look like the attackers may have destroyed data on an unknown number of internal Sony systems. Several files being traded on torrent networks seen by this author include a global Sony employee list, a Microsoft Excel file that includes the name, location, employee ID, network username, base salary and date of birth for more than 6,800 individuals.
To get a sense of the size, consider this filetree posted by Krebs, included in the leaked data. It’s not juicy like a celebrity’s secret code name or the musing of Sony employees about Adam Sandler’s career. But this mere skeleton of some of the information stolen is shocking in its scope.
Read More: The 7 Most Outrageous Things We Learned From the Sony Hack
