The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Guardians of Peace The Interview Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures hack ‘burned down the house’ claims CEO Michael Lynton

Author

By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

January 9, 2015 | 2 min read

Sony Pictures chief executive Michael Lynton has admitted the company had no idea what hit it when it was first infiltrated by hackers.

Michael Lynton - Sony Pictures entertainment CEO

The movie studio, at the close of 2014, endured an unprecedented cyber attack from the Guardians of Peace hacking collective purporting to want to halt the release of comedy movie ‘The Interview’, which featured the demise of DPRK leader Kim Jong Un.

Speaking on the infiltration, Michael Lynton told Associated Press that the company was the “canary in the coal mine” adding that the situation was so excessive “there was no playbook” documenting how to react.

Lynton said: “They came in the house, stole everything, then burned down the house. They destroyed servers, computers, wiped them clean of all the data and took all the data."

On Sony Pictures' response, Lynton added: “You are in essence trying to look at the situation as it unfolds and make decisions without being able to refer to a lot of experiences you've had in the past or other peoples' experiences. You're on completely new ground.

“People relied on each other and it's a good thing they relied on each other, because there wasn't a lot of assistance coming out of the community, except for the FBI.”

In December 2014, the company saw numerous documents leaked containing personal employee data, including that of the company’s top stars.

Guardians of Peace The Interview Sony Pictures

Content created with:

Sony Pictures Entertainment

Find out more

More from Guardians of Peace

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +