A recently created group of hackers dedicated to ransomware – kidnapping of systems and data for which a ransom is demanded – called Ransomed.vc claims that it has accessed all the systems of the multinational Sony Group Corporation and that it has put the captured data in the sale The company has not commented on this information. In view of the uncertainty, thousands of users of the Sony PlayStation console have canceled their accounts on this platform as a precaution in case their data has been compromised.
Ransomed.vc’s message notes: “We have successfully compromised all Sony systems. Since Sony doesn’t want to pay, we will sell the data. The data is for sale. We sell them”. To support their claims, the hacker group provides some evidence that doesn’t seem very strong, including screenshots of an internal login page and an internal PowerPoint presentation outlining the details of the test bank and various Java language files.
The group of cybercriminals has also published a tree of files, which according to the website Cybersecurity Connect, which accessed the first information from the hackers, seems to have less than 6,000 files, a figure that seems too small for a leak that compromised all the systems of the Japanese multinational.
The allegedly stolen data is related to computer systems and Japanese characters appear in many of these systems. While Ransomed.vc has not publicly set the price it is asking for this alleged leak, it has left its contact details via the Tox messaging service, Telegram and email.
The cybercriminals have also set today as a “publication date”, meaning that in the event that no one pays for the data. But it’s something that confuses even more about this situation.
Ransomed.vc presents itself as a “secure solution to address data security vulnerabilities within companies” and further states that it acts “in strict compliance with GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union, for its acronym in English]”. In a sample of the blackmailing nature of the group, he states: “In cases where payment is not received, we are obliged to report a violation of the Data Privacy law to the GDPR agency!”.
The company has not offered any official communication on the issue, although a Sony representative told SecurityWeek that it is “investigating the situation and has no further comment to make.”
Information about the potential data leak caused global searches for “delete PlayStation account” to jump 233%, according to an analysis by the website SecureCheats of Google Trends data. The alarm among players of Sony’s popular console has a precedent that justifies it: in 2011, the network of its video game system was hacked and the data of 77 million users was leaked. The PlayStation Network was down for a period of almost a month.
Yesterday Cybersecurity Week published information that adds a little more confusion to this alleged data leak: a hacker called MajorNelson – with reference to the nickname of Larry Hryb, a popular Microsoft employee who worked on the Xbox console – accused a publication journalists believe “the lies” of the ransomware group. “Ransomed.vc are scammers who are just trying to scam you and go after influencers,” the informants pointed out.
In a situation of this kind, the company must investigate whether a leak has really taken place. Maybe today we get out of doubt.
