North Korea’s official line on the upcoming Seth Rogen and James Franco film The Interview is that the capitalist pigs behind it must be punished for making fun of glorious leader Kim Jong-Un.
Over the past few months, they’ve made a number of vague threats in official state news sources, but this week, someone from North Korea may have taken things a step further by hacking Sony Pictures.
We say ‘may have’ because, while Sony was reportedly the victim of a large-scale hacking and data theft last week, based on what we’ve seen of North Korea’s computing power, much of the nation still appears to be on dial-up.
Be that as it may, the studio’s computer network was “knocked out”, and “hackers” – again, we’re taking this with a grain of salt, because it could all be viral marketing nonsense – warned that they would release sensitive data if demands were not met.
As of today, though, whoever took the data appears to have come good, as a number of Sony’s upcoming movies have begun appearing on torrent sites, including screener copies of Annie, Mr Turner and Still Alice.
While we’re not sure the extent to which the internet is clamouring to see a downbeat drama in which Julianne Moore battles Alzheimer’s, it’s the thought that counts.
The already-released Brad Pitt war movie Fury has also appeared online as part of the leak.
Sony is apparently treating the hack as a criminal matter, so the prospect of it being a viral marketing stunt seems unlikely.
Whether it’s one of the “merciless counter-measures” promised by the North Korean government remains unclear.
We can only hope that, somewhere in a heavily fortified bunker in Pyongyang, Kim Jong-Un is singing along to ‘Hard Knock Life’.
via Uproxx
