Sony has been hit by two different hacker groups in a month, as Guardians of Peace (GOP) and Lizard Squad have targeted Sony Pictures and PSN, respectively. Of the two attacks, the former was more disastrous for Sony, as hackers managed to steal a massive amount of personal and business-related information, and convince Sony to briefly cancel the release of The Interview, a controversial comedy about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
FROM EARLIER: This may be the best evidence yet that the Sony hack was an inside job
New reports from the BBC and The Washington Post reveal that Lizard Squad members may have played a crucial role in GOP’s carefully planned attack against Sony Pictures.
Even though it wasn’t clear whether a link between the two hits exists, it appears the PSN hackers provided GOP credentials belonging to Sony employees, which were then used by GOP to access Sony Pictures’ internal network, steal data, and erase the company’s computers in the process.
“We handed over some Sony employee logins to them. For the initial hack,” a Lizard Squad employee said in an interview with the Post. “We came by them ourselves. It was a couple [of logins].”
Even though the GOP group had an agenda against Sony’s fictional comedy, the Lizard Squad attack on PSN and on Microsoft’s Xbox Live service were not related to the movie, the same source revealed.
Instead, Lizard Squad simply wanted to raise awareness of certain Sony and Microsoft security matters.
“Well, one of our biggest goals is to have fun, of course,” the unnamed Lizard Squad member said. “But we’re also exposing massive security issues with these companies people are trusting their personal information with. The customers of these companies should be rather worried.”
The FBI believes that North Korea was responsible for the Sony Pictures hack, but alternative theories claim that the Sony hack may have been an inside job.
