It appears hackers are taking a hit at Sony Pictures right and left to instill more confusion in the chaos ensuing from the massive Sony hack.
Not content with leaking the private information of thousands of Sony Pictures employees, including company executives and actors that have worked with the studio, hackers purporting to be part of the Guardians of Peace (GOP), the group claiming responsibility for the cyber attack that crippled Sony's internal networks, have posted online the email boxes of two of Sony's top executives.
In another letter posted on code-hosting website GitHub, the group posted links and passwords to the inboxes of Sony Pictures Television President Steve Moko and Sony Pictures Entertainment Co-chairman Amy Pascal. The IDG News Service, which got a good look at both email boxes, says the contents amount up to several gigabytes of private correspondences between the executives and their business partners, including top-ranking executives at other companies, and their family members.
"We have already given our clear demand to the management team of Sony, however, they have refused to accept," says the email in the same mangled English that the other messages were written in. "It seems that you think everything will be well, if you find out the attacker, while no reacting to our demand. We are sending you our warning again. Do carry out our demand if you want to escape us."
The email also demands that Sony stop the "movie of terrorism," which is presumed to be The Interview, a comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco that revolves around the assassination of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un.
"And, Stop immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War!" the email adds.
The email also denies connection to an earlier email that threatened the lives of Sony employees and the lives of their families.
"We know nothing about the threatening email received by Sony staffers, but you should wisely judge by yourself why such things are happening and who is responsible for it," it says.
The group also boasted that neither Sony nor the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will be able to hunt it down because "we are perfect as much."
No clear links have been established to North Korea, but media reports have widely speculated that the secretive regime is behind the Sony cyber attack supposedly because Kim Jong-Un does not like being the target of assassination in a comedy film.
However, North Korea has explicitly denied that it is behind the attacks, although it does not appear to be sympathetic to Sony's plight. In fact, in a statement provided to the state-owned Korean Central News Agency, a Pyongyang spokesperson called the hack a "righteous deed" attributed to North Korea's "supporters and sympathizers" that will only "get stronger to smash the evildoings."
While mounting evidence shows North Korea's connections to the hack, including malware written in Korean and similarities with the malware used in the March 2013 cyber attacks against South Korean banks and broadcasting companies, the possibility of a link to Pyongyang seems sketchy at best, at least if one analyzes the language used in the emails.
"While everything about that email screams 'not a native English speaker' or perhaps 'not an English speaker at all,' it doesn't strike me as particularly Korean," says Timothy Tangherlini, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who researches Korean nationalism.
Still, Tangherlini says Pyongyang has several propagandists who have native fluency in English, and it is possible that they are deliberately writing in patchy English to confuse their target.
