Sony Hackers Got Studio Dirt, 47,000 SSNs

Technology

Published: December 14, 2014 8:35 am

Last Updated: April 28, 2020 5:11 am

Source: Sony Pictures Entertainment/Sony Corp.

Fallout from the hacker attack on the Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) movie studio continued last week as various documents were made public. Studio executives Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin exchanged racially tinged comments on President Obama’s taste in movies, and Pascal had some harsh words for Angelina Jolie. We also found out that Jennifer Lawrence was paid less than her male co-stars for “American Hustle.” Needless to say, apologies and “no comment” statements were the currency of the week.

According to a report at CNET, the studio lost 47,000 Social Security numbers in the attack. Including duplicates, more than 1 million Social Security numbers were included in the files that were stolen. The original attack included the theft of 25 GB of sensitive information on the company’s employees, including the Social Security numbers, medical information and salary data.

The latest report from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reveals that there has been a record total of 720 data breaches recorded through December 9, 2014, and nearly 81.6 million records have been exposed. The previous annual record high was set at 662 in 2010, and this year’s total to date is about 25% higher year-over-year.

The total number of data breaches increased by 12 in the week and the medical/health care sector continues to post the largest percentage of the total breaches, 42.2% (304) out of the total of 708. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled 7.94 million.

On the basis of the number of records exposed, the business sector accounts for 64.7 million breached records in 237 incidents.

The number of banking/credit/financial breaches remained flat at 41 for the year-to-date, and involved 1.18 million records, some 5.7% of the total and 1.4% of the number of records exposed.

Since 2005 there have been 4,966 data breaches tabulated involving more than 673.7 million exposed records.

ALSO READ: If Sony Pulls ‘The Interview,’ Losses Will Hit Tens of Millions of Dollars

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