SONY Music Ireland said it is investigating an alleged hack on its website after three fake news stories appeared on its homepage.
Following the discovery of the stories, the website was quickly removed and the domain was redirecting to the company’s Facebook page.
The stories included a claim that two members of Dublin band The Script had taken their own lives following their show at the Aviva Stadium last weekend.
Another story claimed scientists had proven that watching the X Factor "decreases your intelligence quote" and urged people to better themselves instead of watching "untalented and mediocre karaoke singers". Another post on the homepage claimed US teenage popstar Rebecca Black had married R’n’B star R Kelly.
Sony have said it is investigating the incident and assured the public that all of the stories were entirely false. It is not yet known who was responsible for the incident.
Sony has been subjected to a string of cyber attacks in recent months.
Last month, hackers claimed to have compromised over one million passwords, email addresses and other information from SonyPictures.com.
In April, the company was forced to shut down some of its online services after the details of more than 100 million account holders had been stolen.
Speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday, Paul Dwyer, chief adviser to the International Cyber Threat Task Force and founder of its Irish body, said there were varying motives for such attacks.
"A lot of these are what is known as ‘net attacks’ where people are just showing that they’ve got prestige to do this because they want to get themselves in the news. They can be groups such as Lulz Sec, which is one of the main groups that is hacking at the moment, which tend to be made up of a lot of younger kids, or what is known as ‘script kiddies’ who are using automated tools to do this sort of thing.
"They can be just doing it for prestige. It is also often referred to as a form of ‘hacktivism’ where its a form of activism online where they want to actually show up authority," said Mr Dwyer.
Partner with Grant Thornton Business Risk Services, Cian Blackwell, said: "It’s clearly not been done by someone with any level of sophistication given the poorly worded and bad taste of some of the comments made.
"However, the attack does illustrate the tendency for security incidents to escalate. Once a company has been hacked and exposed as having poor security the resultant publicity often encourages other ‘have-a-go’ hackers to attempt their own hacks."
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Wednesday, July 06, 2011
