Sony Pictures was warned through email days ahead of the impending attack that was to render its internal networks useless on Nov. 24. The only problem was the email was too spammy for its recipients to want to open it.
Evidence dug from the leaked email inbox of Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman Amy Pascal show Pascal, along with five other top-ranking Sony executives including CEO Michael Lynton and President Doug Belgrad, received an email from a random Gmail address asking for "monetary compensation" or "Sony Pictures will be bombarded as a whole."
The group did not specify how much money it was asking for. The email, which was sent from frank1973.david@gmail.com, was signed by God'sApstls, a phrase found in the code of the malware used in the attack.
The email was first reported by Mashable, which looked into some 3GB of data contained in the inboxes of Sony executives leaked by the hacking group calling itself Guardians of Peace. GOP is claiming responsibility for the attacks. It is not clear whether Gods'Apstls and GOP are separate groups.
Here is what the email, with the subject "Notice to Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc." in full says:
We've got great damage by Sony Pictures.
The compensation for it, monetary compensation we want.
Pay the damage, or Sony Pictures will be bombarded as a whole.
You know us very well. We never wait long.
You'd better behave wisely.
From God'sApstls
On Nov. 24, Sony Pictures employees had their computers hijacked by a neon red skull with the line "Hacked by #GOP."
According to the message, Sony should address the attackers' demands lest the hackers release the company's "secrets." Apparently, those demands referred to the monetary compensation sent by God'sApstls, and possibly not the pullout of The Interview, a comedy film about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
Media reports have pointed to the Pyongyang administration as the mastermind of the Sony attack, supposedly because it sees a fictional assassination attempt as an "undisguised sponsoring of terrorism" and an "act of war." However, the latest development in the weeks-long Sony hacking saga shows the hackers want money, not the pullout of the movie.
North Korea has explicitly denied that it is behind the attack, although it is apparently pleased that Sony was hacked and pointed out that the attack could have been done by its "supporters and sympathizers" fighting the cause against the "evildoings" of Sony and "U.S. imperialism."
Still, a previous letter to Sony uploaded to code-hosting site GitHub shows GOP is demanding that the "movie of terrorism," presumably The Interview, not be shown in theaters, throwing more confusion into the mess.
"Stop immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War," says the email.
