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Sony is taking dramatic measures in its response to a devastating hacker attack on its movie studio.
Sony Pictures Entertainment has had a large proportion of its dirty laundry aired on the internet, with thousands of private emails between high profile producers, executives, and movie stars spilling onto torrent sites. The attack has also revealed payroll information, revealing some of the fees stars receive for appearing in films.
It all came as part of an attack from a hacker group known as GOP that is protesting the imminent release of The Interview, a movie starring James Franco and Seth Rogen all about a fictional plan to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Now Sony is hitting back in a rather familiar way.
According to Recode, the studio is using hundreds of Amazon Web Services computers in Asia to carry out a denial of service (DoS) attack on the torrent sites where its pilfered documents are available.
It's a tactic that has been employed in the past to try and combat piracy. It involves bombarding such sites with thousands of bad "seeds" - essentially useless files that clog up and slow down the process of downloading the genuine prohibited files from sharing sites.
Rather ironically, this is also a common tactic employed by hackers when attacking websites and institutions.
Of course, the latest information dump from the Sony hackers has employed a different file name, which has negated Sony's efforts somewhat.
The North Korean government has denied any involvement with this latest attack on Sony, but has labelled it a "righteous deed."
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