On November 24, 2014, employees of Sony Pictures Entertainment booted up their computers to find an image of a skull along with a message from a group calling itself the Guardians of Peace. The message read: "We've already warned you and this is just the beginning. We've obtained all your internal data including your secrets and top secrets [which will be released] if you don't obey us." As Sony would eventually discover, the hackers had stolen reams of sensitive data, including the Social Security numbers of 47,000 current and former employees, system passwords, salary lists, contracts, and even copies of some Sony employees' passports. The hackers accessed hundreds of Outlook mailboxes as well as Sony IT audit documents. They also stole media files and placed pirated copies of five of Sony's movies on illegal file-sharing servers. Sony was forced to completely shut down its information systems in an attempt to stem the data breach. Ultimately, Sony would determine that the damage done by the hackers was far more extensive than it first believed. Not only had data been stolen, but 75 percent of the company's servers had been destroyed and several internal data centers had been wiped clean. Contacted within hours of the event, the FBI soon identified the culprit. In June, several months before the hack, North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had declared that it would take "a decisive and merciless countermeasure" if the U.S. government did not prevent the planned release of Sony's motion picture The Interview, which features two reporters who venture to North Korea to interview and assassinate the country's dictator, Kim Jong-un. In the film, the main character, initially won over by the dictator's apparent kindness, discovers that the tyrant is lying about the country's prosperity and freedoms. The plot, along with the movie's unflattering portrayal of the dictator as ruthless and childish, had caught the attention of the North Korean government. In fact, on Christmas Day, the planned release day in the theater, The Interview became available through video-on-demand outlets such as Amazon.com, and within less than a month, the movie had brought in over $40 million in revenue. Approximately 6 million viewers had rented or purchased the movie in this way. Several hundred movie theaters that opted to screen the movie generated another $6 million. Over the next two months, Sony also released the movie on Netflix, on DVD and Blu-ray, and in theaters in other countries. Sony has worked to recover from the damage done to the company itself by the hack. Sony Pictures' parent company, which is based in Japan, asked regulators there for an extension to file its 2015 third-quarter financial results. It also fired executive Amy Pascal whose leaked emails contained derogatory remarks about Hollywood producers and the U.S. president's movie preferences. The company also provided one year of free credit protection services to current and former employees. In February 2015, President Obama held the first-ever White House summit on cybersecurity issues in Silicon Valley. The summit was billed as an attempt to deal with the increasing vulnerability of U.S. companies to cyberattacks—including those backed by foreign governments. However, the chief executives of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Yahoo all refused to attend the summit. Those companies have long advocated for the government to stop its practice of collecting and using private data to track terrorist and criminal activities and have worked to find better ways to encrypt the data of their customers. However, U.S. security agencies have continually pressured the IT giants to keep the data as unencrypted as possible to facilitate the government's law enforcement work. Ultimately, both the government and private businesses will need to find a way to work together to meet two contradictory needs—the country's need to make itself less vulnerable to cyberattacks while at the same time protecting itself from potential real-world violence. Critical Thinking Questions 1. Do you think that Sony's response to the attack was appropriate? Why or why not? 2. What might Sony and the U.S. government have done differently to discourage future such attacks on other U.S. organizations? 3. Are there measures that organizations and the U.S. government can take together to prevent both real-world terrorist violence and cyberattacks?