Hackers might leak the season finale of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” before it airs. And a couple different groups might be out to get PlayStation users. Both bits of news from Monday reflect a growing trend: The entertainment sector is under attack.
Sometimes it’s the same attackers going after several entertainment firms. The hacker group OurMine last week went after HBO’s social media accounts, and over the weekend it hijacked PlayStation’s social media accounts, hinting that it had infiltrated the gaming system’s network databases. That follows a series of HBO breaches and leaks, as well as the news last week about research that suggested the actual motive for last year’s Mirai malware attack that took down large swaths of the internet was to knock PlayStation users offline.
It’s far from the first time the entertainment sector has been targeted — PlayStation suffered a major breach in 2011, for instance, several years before the the unforgettable Sony Pictures Entertainment hack. The latest hits show the sustained assault has largely been a success.
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RANSOMWARE RIPPLE EFFECTS STILL RIPPLING — The NotPetya malware that infected corporate, academic and government networks in late June continues to disrupt business operations. Sinopec, a major Chinese oil and gas producer, announced Monday that it would shut off several of its facilities’ internet access to remove traces of the malware that had been found on 21 machines, according to Reuters. The disruption occurred at the company’s Shengli Oilfield, one of its major sources of revenue. The company said it would sever internet access to all machines that lacked security software. NotPetya, which followed a similar malware outbreak in May, has cost major multinational firms hundreds of millions of dollars.
