Sony’s latest Michael Jackson hack scandal spells serious trouble for the already troubled giant, as experts warn attacks are worsening.
 Sony latest hacking revelation is bad. |
Sony Music’s entire Michael Jackson back catalogue collection, worth more than $250 million, was stolen by “Internet hackers” last year, it emerged yesterday.
The hackers took more than 50,000 music files, most of which were by the late pop singer by compromising Sony’s security systems.
High profile artists like Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon, Foo Fighters and Avril Lavigne were also affected.
Sources say there was “a degree of sophistication” associated with the latest attack, according to The Sun.
However, Sony refused to say how many tracks or artists were affected.
This latest hacking revelation comes despite the giant promising “all” their sites had been secured following a major hack attack on their PlayStation network, which took the Japanese giant weeks to inform its 77 million PSN users, whose accounts and personal data may have been stolen.
And it appears the attack on the Jackson files occurred not long after this but has not been revealed to the public, until now.
Shortly after Jackson’s death, the singer’s estate signed their biggest recording deal in history worth $250m with Sony Music, giving it the rights to sell his whole back catalogue as well as unreleased tracks.
Two men who were arrested in May last year in the UK appeared in court last week accused of offences in relation to the Sony hack.
This latest revelation does not bode well for Sony and is having a major negative impact on its business, say web security experts.
“Cyber crime has certainly reached its tipping point around the world,” admits Ty Miller, Chief Technology Officer, Pure Hacking.
“As is the case with Sony and its ongoing issues, these attacks are making a very significant commercial impact.”
“It is no longer optional for organisations to ignore security requirements and prepare their organisation for a new operating environment where they may be under constant attack,” Miller warns.
So what does this mean for web security as more and more big names are being attacked? Internet security experts McAfee Labs predict the “true” Anonymous hacking group will either reinvent itself, or die out while others are also predicting hacktivism on companies, public figures and politicians is on the rise.
Organisations need to understand the risk profile that they have by regularly performing penetration testing, which allows them to mitigate their vulnerabilities before a security incident occurs, says Miller.
Companies should proactively protect their corporate data through the use of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) systems. If not, they are accepting a needlessly large level of risk.
Miller also says there has been a tripling of data attacks in its Australian client’s already this year. “And we don’t expect this to diminish,” he warns.
“Organisations also need to monitor attacks by implementing Web Application Firewalls and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems to detect ongoing attacks.”
