Cyber terrorists: 1, Hollywood: 0 as Sony withdraws The Interview


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Agencies

Los Angeles, Dec 19, 2014: Politicians, legal commentators and Hollywood stood united to condemn Sony’s "collapse" in the face of a security threat from anonymous hackers, believed by many to be linked to North Korea.

 

The film was cancelled after a group calling itself Guardians of Peace threatened cinema-goers with a 9/11-type terror attack, prompting North America’s five largest picture house chains to bow out of the Christmas Day release.

 

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and Republican presidential candidate, called the threat an "act of war" - the same phrase used by the North Korean government to describe the plot of the film itself. It depicts Rogen and Franco as TV journalists hired by the CIA to assassinate North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.

 

And while Sony have described themselves as "victims of an unprecedented criminal assault", the company has been criticised for not at least declaring an ambition to release the film via DVD or online streaming.

 

Mr Gingrich said: "With the Sony collapse, America has lost its first cyberwar. This is a very, very dangerous precedent. It wasn’t the hackers who won, it was the terrorists and almost certainly the North Korean dictatorship, this was an act of war.

 

"Sony should release ’The Interview’ online for free so North Koreans can’t censor American creativity - and it should have a Korean language version."

 

Mitt Romney, who ran against Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential elections, accused Sony of "caving" to the hackers. He suggested the film be released "free online globally", and that viewers be asked for a $5 voluntary donation to the Ebola crisis fund.

 

Steve Israel, a Republican politician, wrote on Twitter: "Dear @SonyPictures - please make #TheInterviewMovie available in DVD so I can decide whether to see it, not N Korea."

 

Alan Dershowitz, one of the US’s most prominent lawyers and a Harvard scholar on US constitutional law, described Sony’s decision as "a terrible mistake".

 

"They (North Korea) have won the first victory," he told CNN’s Don Lemon. "This is Pearl Harbor on the First Amendment." He repeated Mr Gingrich’s calls for the film to "at least be made available on demand".

 

Jeffrey Toobin, a legal analyst, said: "What Korea has learned is that they can stop a movie, which means they will now think they can stop a newspaper if there’s a story that they don’t like or they can stop a cable news network, if they don’t like what we’re broadcasting." 

 

President Obama himself said the US should not be bowed by what he called a "very serious" cyber-attack. He told ABC News: "We’ll be vigilant, if we see something that we think is serious and credible, then we’ll alert the public. But for now, my recommendation would be that people go to the movies."

 

Sony have confirmed that they now have no plans to release the film, in any form or anywhere in the world. While that does not rule out a release in future, it means the company stands to lose out on the estimated $42 million it cost to produce The Interview. That’s a significant sum for a comedy film - and could be compounded by the overall impact on Sony’s bottom line of the wider cyber-attack. 

 

In a statement yesterday, the company said: "We are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie... We stand by our filmmakers and their right to free expression."

 

Now, Steve Carell film scrapped

Just hours after intelligence reports began officially linking North Korea to terrorism threats surrounding The Interview, Hollywood has reacted by scrapping another film project that was due to be set in the region. An as yet untitled thriller with Gore Verbinski directing and Steve Carell lined up to play the lead had been due to start filming in March. But following the cyber-attack on Sony by an organisation called the Guardians of Peace which culminated on Tuesday in the cancellation of the New York premiere of the studios’ Seth Rogen film The Interview amid threats of a 9/11-style terror attack, filmmakers behind the Steve Carell film have decided to pull the plug.

 

Who are the Guardians of Peace?


North Korea

The country began as idle speculation, and has quickly become the main suspect. There are technical reasons to think that the country was involved, and it definitely has the capabilities. But the main reason North Korea is being blamed is because links were made with the upcoming film The Interview, which depicts among other things the violent of death of Kim Jong-Un.


Angry (ex-)employee

The hack is of such a huge size, and runs so deep, that it’s likely whoever did it had some sort of physical access to the company and its servers. That was, at the beginning of the hack, one of the main theories — but seems to have been largely left behind in the wake of the excitement over North Korea’s involvement.


Anti-security/hacking groups

They are often driven by the same anarchic philosophy that has characterised Anonymous, where many of the hackers came from. Sometimes known as the ’lulz’, groups can seek to cause as much damage as possible for little reason other than personal enjoyment. But there could also be something more political at work — Sony, along with other major distributors, has been active in fighting internet file sharing and has even had its systems taken down by Anonymous in 2011.


Cyber-criminals

The often under-estimated part of hacking and internet security is cyber-criminals — they account for most malicious activity on the internet, but are often talked about and worried about a lot less. 




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