Saturday, January 3, 2015

Crippling Sony hack 'was the work of a disgruntled former employee named "Lena" who was laid off'

Daily Mail ^ | 1-1-2015 | Joel Christie and Sara Malm 

Cybersecurity experts have given a detailed outline to the FBI about the hack attack against Sony Pictures, insisting it was not the work of North Korea but a group of current and former employees who shared a 'mutual hatred' for the company.
While the FBI and Sony have announced they believe Pyongyang carried out the hack - claims that were denied by leader Kim Jong-un - independent security officials have been coming forward for the past week saying most of the evidence points to an inside job.
Silicon Valley security firm Norse, which provides intelligence to companies to prevent their software from being hacked, has been investigating the compromise at Sony and shared their findings with the FBI on Tuesday, according to Gawker.
Norse senior vice president Kurt Stammberger said the hack hinges on a woman he called 'Lena', who he says worked in a 'key technical' position for 10 years but was sent packing in May during a large sweep of lay-offs. 
Stammberger would not reveal to Gawker how Norse came to such a conclusion.
However he said Lena would have remained 'very well placed to know which servers to target' after leaving the company and 'where all the sensitive information in Sony was stored'.
Lena - which may be an alias - then joined forces with other former employees and people in the hacking community to humiliate Sony.
Stammberger said the people who hadn't worked for Sony 'were individuals that were connected with torrenting Sony movies and content online, were targeted by legal and law enforcement arms, and were irritated that basically they were caught'.
'We are very confident that this was not an attack master-minded by North Korea and that insiders were key to the implementation of one of the most devastating attacks in history,' Stammberger told CBS
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...

T-Shirt