Sony Pictures Entertainment, looking to curb the dissemination of the company's secrets, acquired from their systems by hackers, has issued a threat of legal action against Twitter if the social network does not ban the accounts of users who send out tweets containing the leaked secrets.
The threat was included in a letter sent by David Boies, general counsel of Sony Pictures, to his counterpart at Twitter, Vijaya Gadde.
The letter, which demanded the cooperation of Twitter in suspending user accounts that have been associated with the dissemination of the company secrets of Sony Pictures, was confirmed by CNET and authenticated by Twitter.
Boies issued a warning that if the company's secrets continued to propagate through Twitter in any form, then Sony Pictures would be holding Twitter responsible for damages and losses that would arise from the incident.
The key user account that Sony is taking issue with is @bikinirobotarmy, which has tweeted screenshots of the leaked emails of Sony top executives. The account is currently accessible, along with screenshots of the emails that discuss a variety of company secrets.
The letter shows just how much Sony Pictures is willing to do to try to limit the damages of the hacking attack that crippled its systems and extracted massive amounts of information contained within them.
The cyber attack, which was claimed to have been done by a hacker group named Guardians of Peace, has led to the leakage of a long list of financial documents and personal information of employees, in addition to company secrets obtained from the email accounts of Sony Pictures executives. Movies such as Annie, which are yet to be released by Sony Pictures, have also been uploaded to the Internet.
After receiving chilling threats that invoked the 9/11 attacks, Sony Pictures decided to withdraw the release of The Interview on Dec. 25, which is a comedy movie that features a plot to assassinate Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea.
The FBI has identified that North Korea is the source of the cyber attacks, based on the software that was used to infiltrate the computer systems of Sony Pictures.
The message sent by Boies has a similar tone to the letters that he previously sent to news media companies, wherein he demanded that the companies ignore and destroy all the information that has been leaked by the hackers. The companies were also threatened to be held responsible for damages and losses if they failed to comply with the demand.
