Sony Pictures got hacked and it’s unlike anything I’ve followed before. Not stolen credit cards, but everything: unreleased films, executives’ emails, salary spreadsheets, employees’ SSNs, entire server images, dumped publicly by a group calling itself “Guardians of Peace.” Machines were wiped. The company reportedly fell back to fax machines and paper checks. The rumored motive is geopolitical, their upcoming movie about North Korea, which would make this a nation-state attacking a movie studio over a comedy.
The security lessons being passed around: flat networks let attackers roam; plaintext password files named “passwords.xlsx” are real and everywhere; and email is forever, since every hallway-snark message you send is a future headline. I deleted some old chat messages this week purely on reflex.
Elsewhere, NASA test-flew Orion, the capsule meant to someday carry humans toward Mars, a flawless two-orbit shakedown. One org’s systems imploding while another’s fly perfectly, same fortnight. Engineering contains multitudes.
TIL: network segmentation. Our infra guy walked me through our VPC layout, what can talk to what, and why the database can’t see the internet. “Design for the breach,” he says. After this week, I get it.