Sony's Industrial Espionage Grand Slam

The Sony e-mail hack is too irresistible to ignore. The confiding messages trash stars like Angelina Jolie and Adam Sandler. The seven-figure salaries of studio execs, nearly all men, are underlined. Juicy remarks — all the more believable because of misspellings and bad grammar — kid about President Obama’s taste in movies. To top it off, North Korea might be behind it all.

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It’s the kind of tinsel town mess that is too good not to be true...

It was theft, a cyber break-in, that led to the disclosures. Hackers broke into the Sony Pictures Entertainment system and stole a boatload of private information: salaries, e-mails and personal data, with only a fraction trotted out so far.

It’s industrial espionage on a grand scale. Repairing Sony’s computer systems will cost tens of millions while some 30,000 Sony employees are left exposed... It’s a mugging, tech-style.

There are takeaways for the rest of us.  
• Never e-mail anything you can’t explain in public. 
• Think twice before hitting the send key. 
• Don’t assume anything remains secret after it’s typed out on screen. (more)