The Breaking of the Cyber Silver Screen: Destruction and Silence that Struck Sony, November-December 2014

The Breaking of the Cyber Silver Screen: Destruction and Silence that Struck Sony, November-December 2014

In November 2014, Sony Pictures in the United States suffered an unprecedented cyber attack. Thousands of terminals were destroyed, the internal network was silenced, and unreleased movies, employees' personal information, and confidential contracts were leaked to the outside world. Add to that threats over the release of "The Interview," a film satirizing Kim Jong-un, and major cinema chains stopped showing the film. The attack was shocking not for monetary purposes, but because it was tinged with political intent to suppress insults to the national leader and directly upset freedom of expression.

Behind this was the circumstance that North Korea was emphasizing inexpensive and highly effective cyberwarfare as a new weapon in its arsenal as it repeatedly conducted nuclear tests and missile launches, and tensions with the United States were rising. Technically, wiper-type malware was used. After a long period of incubation, the malware took over the management server and distributed destructive orders on a company-wide scale. The master boot record was overwritten, rendering the terminals unrecoverable. Intrusion routes included spear phishing and exploitation of weak authentication, and the internal deployment was sophisticated enough to evade detection.

This incident marked the advent of an era in which private companies are caught in the forefront of inter-state conflicts. At the same time, it highlighted the importance of basic defensive measures such as information leak prevention, network isolation, least privilege design, and regular recovery drills. The Sony attack has left a mark on the world that cyberspace has become a stage on which culture and freedom are directly threatened.