Sony Corp. hired forensic professionals to investigate the recent large-scale digital security breach at its Sony Pictures studio in Hollywood. The hired investigators said that the cyberattack was well-planned and has never been done before. According to the team, an "organized group" executed the breach.
The comments were made in an email by Mandiant forensics unit top executive Kevin Mandia from FireEye Inc. to Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton. The email was obtained by international news agency Reuters.
However, details regarding the extent of the damage and the perpetuating group's identity were still not disclosed to the public.
The cyberattack, considered to be the largest and most destructive to ever hit the United States, rendered PCs in Sony's network useless as their drives were wiped by the breach.
It would be costly to repair the individual drives as it would need to be re-imaged from scratch or replaced.
Some sources close to the ongoing investigation said that North Korea is being looked at as a suspect, but a diplomat from the country denied the allegations.
"The scope of this attack differs from any we have responded to in the past, as its purpose was to both destroy property and release confidential information to the public," Lynton wrote in an email forwarded to employees.
Lynton said that the cyber-crime was "unparalleled" and that Sony or other firms "could have been fully prepared" for the destructive digital breach.
Joshua Campbell, a spokesman from the FBI, said that the agency has the same opinion as Mandiant's and that conventional anti-virus programs did not detect the cyberattack. Campbell also did not give out more details regarding the progress of the investigations.
PacketNinjas CEO Daniel Clemens said that even if the breach was considered unprecedented, Sony could have done more things "to prepare and defend against" the cyberattack.
Clemens went on to say that if the government chose to probe the breach, it would discover that Sony lacked the needed safeguards to block such an attack and to trace the group of hackers.