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For more than a year, some of the most powerful women in entertainment — including Amy Pascal, Kathleen Kennedy, Stacey Snider and a 'Homeland' director — have been impersonated by a cunning thief who targets insiders with promises of work, then bilks them out of thousands of dollars. The Hollywood Reporter has obtained exclusive audio recordings of the savvy imposter as victims come forward and a global investigation heats up. He was a freelance documentary photographer, 27 and eager, but not inexperienced. He'd worked in conflict zones for several prestige newspapers and magazines and shot ad campaigns for corporate clients....

PBS revealed yesterday that it would be postponing the third season of Finding Your Roots after it was discovered that producers succumbed to pressure from Ben Affleck last year to leave out details of his slave-owning ancestors. According to emails released in the Sony hack by WikiLeaks, Affleck urged producers and host Henry Louis Gates not to include these relatives in his episode of the show, which traces back the ancestry of celebrities. While Mr. Gates claimed, after WikiLeaks, that these ancestors were only left out to make room to include more interesting ones—a Revolutionary War soldier and a mystic—most...

Gotcha? 01.02.15 U.S. Spies Say They Tracked ‘Sony Hackers’ For Years American spies have detailed dossiers on the North Koreans who the U.S. says were behind the Sony attack. But the still-secret evidence likely won’t convince skeptics. The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies for years have been tracking the hackers who they believe to be behind the cyber attack on Sony, according to current and former American officials. And during that long pursuit, U.S. agencies accumulated still-classified information that helps tie the hackers to the recent Sony intrusion. The Obama administration announced a round of sanctions against North Korea Friday,...

Cybersecurity experts have given a detailed outline to the FBI about the hack attack against Sony Pictures, insisting it was not the work of North Korea but a group of current and former employees who shared a 'mutual hatred' for the company. While the FBI and Sony have announced they believe Pyongyang carried out the hack - claims that were denied by leader Kim Jong-un - independent security officials have been coming forward for the past week saying most of the evidence points to an inside job. Silicon Valley security firm Norse, which provides intelligence to companies to prevent their...

January 02, 2015 FoxNews.comThe Obama administration on Friday imposed a wave of sanctions against members of the North Korean government, amounting to the U.S. government's first official response to the cyber-attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment. Despite lingering questions from private security analysts over whether North Korea was responsible for the hack -- as the FBI has alleged -- the White House described the new sanctions as retaliation against Pyongyang. "We take seriously North Korea's attack that aimed to create destructive financial effects on a U.S. company and to threaten artists and other individuals with the goal of restricting their right...

A hacking threat against CNN that rose to the FBI attention is actually a hoax, claims a freelance writer from Tennessee who is claiming responsibility for the post. David Garrett Jr., from Nashville, says he we the one who posted to the anonymous site ´pastebin´ claiming to be Sony hackers the ´Guardians of Peace.´ It included the bizarre demand that CNN should turn over anchor Wolf Blitzer. It is believed that the FBI issued a Joint Intelligence Bulletin based on that post that warned CNN and other media companies that hack attacks could be in the works.

The hacker group that brought Sony to its knees is now threatening to hack CNN, the FBI warns. In a cryptic, menacing message posted online, the so-called 'Guardians of Peace' says: 'The result of investigation by CNN is so excellent that you might have seen what we were doing with your own eyes.' The group then offers the bizarre demand that the network 'turn over' Wolf Blitzer, the popular host of CNN's 'Situation Room.'

30 December 2014 Last updated at 11:33 Sony hackers 'shared' stolen employee login data Data that helped hackers access Sony's internal network came from another group targeting the firm's gaming network, reports the Washington Post. In an interview, a self-proclaimed Lizard Squad member said it had given stolen data to the Guardians of Peace. The GoP has carried out several attacks on Sony in a bid to halt the release of comedy film The Interview. By contrast, the Lizard Squad targeted Sony's PlayStation network knocking it offline on Christmas Day. The man interviewed by the newspaper appears to one of...

The FBI and the President may claim that the Hermit Kingdom is to blame for the most high-profile network breach in forever. But almost all signs point in another direction. So, “The Interview” is to be released after all. The news that the satirical movie—which revolves around a plot to murder Kim Jong-Un—will have a Christmas Day release as planned, will prompt renewed scrutiny of whether, as the US authorities have officially claimed, the cyber attack on Sony really was the work of an elite group of North Korean government hackers. All the evidence leads me to believe that the...

Gotnews.com can confirm that North Korea was not behind the Sony hack contrary to major media reports. An investigation into the data shows that someone copied the released 200GB of data over 5-6 hours on the night of November 21st.

I am deeply skeptical of the FBI’s announcement on Friday that North Korea was behind last month’s Sony hack. The agency’s evidence is tenuous, and I have a hard time believing it. But I also have trouble believing that the U.S. government would make the accusation this formally if officials didn’t believe it. Clues in the hackers’ attack code seem to point in all directions at once. The FBI points to reused code from previous attacks associated with North Korea, as well as similarities in the networks used to launch the attacks. Korean language in the code also suggests a...

Sony’s current plan for “The Interview’’ is to release the controversial comedy for free on Crackle, the streaming service it owns, sources said Sunday.

Obama: North Korea Sony Hack ‘Not An Act of War’ 21 December 2014 The US is reviewing whether to put North Korea back onto its list of state sponsors of terrorism, President Barack Obama said in a wide-ranging interview recorded on Friday and broadcast on Sunday, as he decides how to respond to the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures that has been blamed on the communist nation. Speaking to CNN, Obama described the Sony hacking case as a “very costly, very expensive” example of cybervandalism, but did not call it an act of war. In trying to fashion a proportionate response,...

Friday, during his end of the year news conference, President Obama admonished Sony Pictures for cancelling its Christmas Day release of “The Interview.” He went on to say that if the company had called him, he would have told them to stick by the movie. Sony responded later that same day saying they did in fact reach out to the White House:

Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton appeared on CNN Friday afternoon to address the company's decision to pull "The Interview" from theaters.Lynton told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that Sony did not cave to the hacker group Guardians of Peace (GOP) by pulling the movie.A clip of the interview ran Friday afternoon on CNN. The full interview will air Friday night on Anderson Cooper 360.He said the decision to pull "The Interview" only came after the major theater chains decided not to show the film. It wasn't because Sony didn't want to distribute the movie."Movie theaters came to us … one by one...

George Clooney: Kim Jong-un can’t tell me what to watch By Derrick Bryson Taylor George Clooney won’t be told what to watch, especially by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “Sony didn’t pull [The Interview] because they were scared,” the 53-year-old actor told Deadline. “They pulled the movie because of all the theaters said they were not going to run it. And they said they were not going to run it because they talked to their lawyers and those lawyers said, if somebody dies in one of these, then you’re going to be responsible.” Clooney also shared that he had been...

I’m glad he spoke up, not only because he’s right, not only because a little public shaming from an A-lister might get others to rethink, but because that tribute to Hollywood’s bravery that he gave a few years ago at the Oscars would have looked even more embarrassing in hindsight if he’d kept quiet about this.Nothing fancy about the logic of his petition: “We know that to give in to these criminals now will open the door for any group that would threaten freedom of expression, privacy and personal liberty. We hope these hackers are brought to justice but...

Sony executive at the heart of the leaked emails met with the civil rights activist to discuss battling an ‘exclusionary, almost all-white hierarchy’ in Hollywood.Amy Pascal, the embattled executive whose personal emails were exposed by the hack on Sony Pictures, has met with civil rights advocate Al Sharpton to discuss white bias in Hollywood. The meeting was prompted by leaked emails from Pascal to producer Scott Rudin, in which the pair joke about Barack Obama’s likely taste in films. “Would he like to finance some movies?” Rudin asked, ahead of Pascal meeting the president. “I doubt it. Should I ask...

Today, the FBI would like to provide an update on the status of our investigation into the cyber attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE). In late November, SPE confirmed that it was the victim of a cyber attack that destroyed systems and stole large quantities of personal and commercial data. A group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace” claimed responsibility for the attack and subsequently issued threats against SPE, its employees, and theaters that distribute its movies. The FBI has determined that the intrusion into SPE’s network consisted of the deployment of destructive malware and the theft of proprietary information...

#BREAKING New message to @Sony top execs from hackers: "very wise" decision to scrap movie from theaters via @CNN @brianstelter #SonyHack