Disney Held To Ransom By Hackers

Following the news that Disney are being held to ransom by hackers who claim they will release Pirates of the Carribean, IT security experts from ESET and SentinelOne commented below.

Mark James, Security Specialist at ESET:

“Anything that has a value will always be a potential victim of theft, either digital or physical. If someone has it and someone wants it then in theory there’s a market for it. The latest film to hit the headlines is the new Disney film “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”, hackers are seeking payment to stop them releasing the film before its official UK release date of May 26.

“Disney has refused to pay the ransom and rightly so. If you’re going to download the film from an unofficial or dodgy source anyway then a month before or a month after is not going to make much of a difference. The film industry has been plagued with piracy issues as early as the 1960’s and this isn’t going to change anytime soon. Paying the ransom or indeed any ransom is generally frowned upon for many reasons. Funding other criminal activity, rewarding the bad guys or funding future attacks are all good reasons to not pay as chances are it’s going to get released anyway.”

Tony Rowan, Chief security Consultant at SentinelOne:

 “This Disney hack is straight forward extortion and should be treated as the crime it really is. Well done Disney for refusing to pay and contacting law enforcement. It’s an interesting example as it shows that ransom attacks don’t just have to leverage crypto-locking. Cyber attacks that are stealthy can be used to steal intellectual property for whatever reason, and can in fact be far more damaging. These thefts and extortion attempts against content creators can be expected to grow in frequency and perhaps volume. It highlights the importance of using next generation endpoint security that is far more capable of dealing with unknown threats.”