14 DAY TRIAL // Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) was not the only target of Guardians of Peace (GoP), the hackers that stole and disclosed to the public significant amounts of data from the computers of the company, as the group also threatened an unnamed media organization.
According to a Joint Intelligence Bulletin (JIB) from the FBI, dated December 24, the hackers have threatened at least one other entity in a similar manner used on SPE.
More organizations could be targeted this way in the future
The document has been obtained by The Intercept and it was marked as unclassified, but for official use only (U//FOUO). It provides a brief overview of the activity carried out by GoP, focusing on the threat messages that have been issued under the name of the group since December 13 on Pastebin, an anonymous text publishing platform.
In the threats posted online, unknown individuals threatened with physical, terrorist-like attacks, on theaters that would play Sony’s comedy “The Interview.”
Neither FBI, nor DHS had any information that would give credit to this type of intents. After initially cancelling the release of the movie, Sony made it available both through online services such as YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video, and in a number of theaters across the US.
Sony Pictures Entertainment, the target of the hackers, is referred to as USPER1 (US Person 1) in the official document.
The file is titled “November 2014 Cyber Intrusion on USPER1 and Related Threats” and it says that the threats made by GoP “have extended to USPER2 – a news media organization – and may extend to other such organizations in the near future.”
The document from the FBI acknowledges that the threatening messages could have been posted by copycat actors, while not dismissing the possibility that they came from the real hackers themselves.
Lizard Squad may have made the Sony hack easier for GoP
The attack has been officially attributed to the government of North Korea, as an attempt to block the release of “The Interview” comedy movie, which tells the fictitious story of two reporters who get to interview North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and are tasked by the CIA to assassinate him.
It is unclear what evidence the FBI holds in support to this accusation, but many voices in the security industry say that the analysis of the malware makes it very difficult to point the finger to a specific entity.
In recent news, Lizard Squad, the hackers that have brought down the services of Sony PlayStation Network and Xbox Live on Christmas day, said that they were in contact with some members of Guardians of Peace and supplied them the log-in credentials of two Sony employees in order to be able to infiltrate deeper in the computer network of SPE.