Security

Emails to the movie studio’s employees threatening them and their families is the latest bad news for Sony Pictures since a cyber attack last week exposed sensitive documents

Last week’s cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment turned scarier on Friday when the hackers responsible reportedly threatened company employees and their families.

Someone claiming to represent the hacker group Guardians of Peace sent emails to Sony Pictures employees in which they promised to bring about the “collapse” of the company. The message, sent by the self-described “head of GOP,” asked that employees join the hackers in denouncing Sony Pictures or suffer severe consequences.

“If you don’t,” the message said, “not only you but your family will be in danger.”

Variety, which obtained the email, also reported that Sony Pictures, after becoming aware of the message, told employees to turn off their mobile devices. There is no word on the number of employees who received the message.

“We understand that some of our employees have received an email claiming to be from GOP,” a Sony spokesman told Fortune in a statement. “We are aware of the situation and are working with law enforcement,”

In total, the e-mail is four paragraphs long, contains bad grammar, and goes on to attack Sony Pictures while promising further unspecified action. It’s unclear how many Sony employees received the message.

“[W]hat we have done so far is only a small part of our further plan,” the email said. “It’s your false [sic] if you if you think this crisis will be over after some time. All hope will leave you and Sony Pictures will collapse,” the e-mail reads.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also investigating the matter. In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, the FBI said it was aware of the threatening e-mails and that it will continue to investigate the cyber attack.

Little is known about Guardians of Peace, which the email’s author described as “a worldwide organization.” The group took responsibility for last week’s cyber attack, involved leaking numerous sensitive company documents and causing Sony Pictures to shut down its computer system. Among the documents released was salary information for thousands of Sony Pictures employees as well as documents containing thousands of passwords to company computers, social media accounts and even financial accounts.

Reports surfaced earlier this week that Sony Pictures was set to blame the government of North Korea for backing the cyber attack, but the country has denied any involvement. Kim Jong Un previously called Sony Pictures’ upcoming release of the film The Interview — a comedy that depicts an assassination attempt on the North Korean leader — “an act of war.”

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

(COPENHAGEN, Denmark) — A Moroccan-born Dane was found guilty Thursday of instigating and promoting terrorism, this time on social media.

Sam Mansour, 54, was sentenced to four years in prison at a Copenhagen court for violating Denmark’s terror laws.

Mansour had denied the charges, saying his postings were legal under freedom of speech laws. In Facebook postings, he wrote “terrorism is a duty” and “we are fearful,” and urged jihadis to kill several Danes whom he had named.

His online activities, which also include sending emails with similar content, took place from early 2012 until his arrest on Feb. 11, prosecutors said.

The court rejected the prosecution’s demand that Mansour, who has lived in the Scandinavian country since 1984, be expelled after having served his time, saying he could be “mistreated” by Moroccan authorities for his activities in Denmark.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Mansour would appeal the ruling by three judges and a six-man jury.

In 2007, Mansour, then known as Said Mansour, became the first person in Denmark convicted under a 2002 anti-terrorism law that forbids the instigation of terrorism. He was sentenced to three-and-half years in prison.

Those dreaded boxes of distorted text will no longer annoy you when logging in

Just today, you may have been forced to squint at a jumble of hard-to-read letters and numbers to prove you weren’t a robot in order to log into a website.

That security feature, called CAPTCHA, has been frustrating Internet users for more than a decade—and it’s not even all that great at weeding out real humans from automated spam scripts, according to Google. So the search giant has unveiled a new login security measure dubbed “No CAPTCHA” that it claims is both simpler for humans and better at warding off bots.

Here’s how it works: Instead of typing in obtuse strings of text, users will simply have to check a box asserting that they’re not robots. A risk analysis algorithm will evaluate the way the user interacts with the web page to determine if he’s a person or a bot. For most people, the checkmark is all that will be required. If the algorithm isn’t sure, a user may be forced to type in the character string the old-fashioned way.

Google says that artificial intelligence can now solve the traditional distorted text fields with 99.8% accuracy, so a new method was needed.

Google is also working to make CAPTCHAs more bearable on mobile devices. Users will start being asked to match similar images in a grid instead of typing in text.

Some big names like Snapchat and WordPress have already implemented No CAPTCHA, and Google says the feature is helping users to log in faster.

Could North Korea be to blame?

Sony is having a rough start to the holiday season. The tech giant’s movie division, Sony Pictures, is the victim of an ongoing cyberattack that has resulted in upcoming movies being leaked, communication systems going offline and Twitter accounts being hijacked.

The timing of the attack has led to increasing speculation that North Korea may have orchestrated it, possibly as retribution for an upcoming comedy in which Seth Rogen and James Franco are tasked with assassinating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Investigators have found hacking tools similar to those used by North Korea in previous attacks on South Korea, according to Reuters.

Here’s everything we know so far about the incident:

The attacks began with an ominous photo

On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Sony Pictures employees turned on their computers and were greeted with an ominous picture of red skull and a warning that the company’s “top secrets” would be released if unstated demands were not met.

“We’ve already warned you, and this is just a beginning,” the image reads. “If you don’t obey us, we’ll release data shown the world.”

Another image depicting Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton in hell was posted on Sony Twitter accounts, a sure sign the accounts were compromised. According to a Reddit thread, the hackers claim to have obtained a trove of data that includes passwords, internal financial documents and even copies of celebrities’ passports.

Sony’s communication systems went down for a week

Sony Pictures took down its email and messaging systems for a week as it tried to contain the cyberattack. Employees reportedly had to use phone calls, handwritten notes and fax machines to carry out their work. Multiple reports indicate that Sony’s email system was expected to return Monday, though Sony hasn’t confirmed that yet.

Sony’s big upcoming movies leaked

So far the biggest tangible result of the hack seems to be the leak of five Sony films. DVD-quality versions of Fury, Annie, Still Alice, Mr. Turner and To Write Love on Her Arms are all now available on file-sharing sites.

All of the movies except for Fury have yet to be widely released, so piracy could be a huge blow to their box office take. Over the summer, The Expendables 3 bombed at the box office because a high-quality version of the movie leaked online weeks before it premiered. And a 2011 Carnegie Mellon study found that such pre-release leaks can reduce a movie’s box office take by as much as 19%.

So that’s what we know for sure. But the hack took on a new dimension on Friday, when Re/code reported Sony is investigating North Korea’s possible involvement in the cyberattack, potentially staging the attack from China.

Here’s what we know that actually makes that claim seem plausible:

North Korea hates Sony’s upcoming movie The Interview

Sony’s big Christmas movie this year is The Interview, which stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as TV journalists tasked by the CIA with assassinating Kim Jong-un. North Korean officials are, unsurprisingly, not pleased about a movie that centers on trying to kill their supreme leader for laughs. A government official told North Korean state media in June that releasing the film would constitute “a blatant act of terrorism and war” and would lead to “merciless” retaliation from the country. The government also denounced the film as “undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war” in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.

Rogen shrugged off the warning on Twitter at the time, but The Interview was delayed from its original October release date shortly afterward. (Sony has said the delay was unrelated to North Korea’s statements.)

North Korea’s cyberattack capabilities are increasing fast

Residents of North Korea are known to be isolated from the rest of the world, deprived of basic Internet access and other modes of global communication. However, the country is growing increasingly comfortable weaponizing the Internet. In November 2013, South Korean media reported that Kim Jong-un called cyberattacks a “magic weapon” that could help North Korea launch “ruthless strikes” against its southern foe.

A secretive North Korean bureau called Unit 121 is tasked with infiltrating computer networks, planting viruses and carrying out cyberattacks, according to a Hewlett-Packard report on North Korea’s cyber capabilities. The division carries out attacks both from within North Korea and in Shenyang, China, near the North Korean border. South Korean media have claimed that Unit 121 is the third-largest cyber intelligence unit in the world, behind the U.S. and Russia, though China is also up there.

The U.S. government is taking claims of North Korean involvement seriously

Claims of North Korean involvement are credible enough that the U.S. government is reportedly looking into them. NBC News reports that several government agencies are considering North Korea as a possible suspect in the hack. The FBI is among the U.S. agencies now looking into the hack, according to Reuters.

A North Korean diplomat in New York has denied that his country was involved in hacking. “Linking [North Korea] to the Sony hacking is another fabrication targeting the country,” the official, who asked to remain anonymous, told Voice of America. “My country publicly declared that it would follow international norms banning hacking and piracy.”