Sony to Blame North Korea for Giant Hack

It may or may not have been over North Korea's thin skin about a Seth Rogen movie, but Sony Pictures Entertainment is set to lay the blame for last week's crippling hack directly at the feet of Pyongyang, reports Re/code, citing two sources close to the investigation. An official announcement of Sony's findings, conducted with security firm Mandiant, could come as soon as today. The hack, which Re/Code notes paralyzed Sony's computers and forced employees to work with pencils and dead trees, appeared similar in nature to one in South Korea a year ago, adds Ars Technica.

Pyongyang isn't exactly tripping over itself to deny the hack, with a North Korean rep to the UN saying, "The hostile forces are relating everything to [North Korea]. I kindly advise you to just wait and see." Unreleased films were leaked online, but it's also emerging that a lot of sensitive internal and employee data were also breached, notes Ars. One of the juicier tidbits, picked up by Kevin Roose at Fusion, involves an apparent pay gap between Columbia Pictures co-presidents Michael De Luca and Hannah Minghella: De Luca is on track to make some $800,000 more this year, as Roose writes, "for essentially the same job." (More Sony stories.)