Five movie screeners from Sony Pictures have made their way onto torrent sites after the studio’s computer system was hacked earlier this week.
These include unreleased titles “Annie,” “Mr. Turner,” “Still Alice,” and “To Write Love On Her Arms,” as well as World War II drama “Fury.” The latter has been in theaters for over six weeks, but is now the second most popular pirated film with more than 1.2 million downloads as of 11AM on Sunday, notes Variety.
The leak is most likely related to the hacking last week of one of Sony Pictures’ servers, which caused all computers used by the studio to go down. An image with the words “Hacked by #GOP” (which stands for Guardians of Peace, not the Republican Party) appeared on employees’ computer screens, along with a demand for access to financial documents.
The studio is also reportedly investigating a link between the attack and North Korea, as retaliation for “The Interview,” a comedy film about a CIA plot to assassinate Kim Jong-Un.
In an email to The Verge, a person claiming to be one of the hackers responsible for the attack said they had been aided by Sony employees.
The alleged hacker also told The Verge that IT security at Sony Pictures is lax: “Sony doesn’t lock their doors, physically, so we worked with other staff with similar interests to get in.”
Indeed, this isn’t the first time Sony Pictures has suffered a massive security breach. Back in 2011, a hacker group managed to access users’ passwords, email addresses, and other sensitive information on SonyPictures.com with a SQL injection.
We’ve contacted Sony Pictures for comment and will update this post if they respond.