UPDATED 22:16 EDT / DECEMBER 22 2014

NEWS

Sony threatens to sue Twitter over dissemination of hacked emails

twitter fail whaleSony Corp. has threatened to sue Twitter Inc. if the company doesn’t remove accounts that are disseminating leaked emails obtained from its well publicized hacking by North Korea.

Sony lawyer David Boies is reported to have written to Twitter’s general counsel Vijaya Gadde, saying that if “stolen information continues to be disseminated by Twitter in any manner,” Sony will “hold Twitter responsible for any damage or loss arising from such use or dissemination by Twitter.”

In the letter, obtained by Motherboard, Sony asked that Twitter share the legal threat specifically with Val Broeksmit, a English musician who has been regularly posting screenshots of hacked Sony emails on his Twitter account.

Further, Sony demanded that Twitter “comply with all future requests with regard to any other account holder seeking to disseminate the Stolen Information via Twitter.”

“[Sony] does not consent to Twitter’s or any Twitter account holder’s possession, review, copying, dissemination, publication, uploading, downloading, or making any use of the Stolen Information, and to request your cooperation in suspending the Account Holder’s Twitter account and the account of any other user seeking to disseminate the Stolen Information via Twitter,” the email said.

Twitter has confirmed that the emails are true, however has made no statement as to whether they will agree to Sony’s request, or instead ignore it. At the time of writing the Twitter account of Val Broeksmit has a number of screenshots of leaked emails still publicly available.

This isn’t the first time Sony has threatened to sue over disclosure of its hacked data, having previously threatened media outlets and journalists who have revealed the inner workings of the company disclosed via the hack.

If only Sony had given as much rigour and attention to network security as it does to threatening people with legal action, perhaps it wouldn’t be in the mess it is to begin with.


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