Sony Pictures hack

The days are gone forever when our enemies could blackmail us with nuclear bombs.

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On November 24, 2014, a hacker group which identified itself by the name "Guardians of Peace" (GOP) leaked a release of confidential data from the film studio Sony Pictures. The data included personal information about Sony Pictures employees and their families, e-mails between employees, information about executive salaries at the company, copies of then-unreleased Sony films, and other information. The perpetrators then employed a variant of the Shamoon wiper malware to erase Sony's computer infrastructure.

In November 2014, the GOP group demanded that Sony pull its film The Interview, a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and threatened terrorist attacks at cinemas screening the film. After major U.S. cinema chains opted not to screen the film in response to these threats, Sony elected to cancel the film's formal premiere and mainstream release, opting to skip directly to a downloadable digital release followed by a limited digital theatrical release the next day.