James Franco and Seth Rogen are the latest targets of hackers targeting Sony Pictures. The actors, who star in the studio’s upcoming comedy “The Interview,” had their salaries revealed by hackers who go by the name “The Guardians of the Peace.”
“The Guardians of the Peace” began their attack on Sony Pictures on Nov. 24, leaking watermarked copies of studios’ upcoming films, including “Fury” and “Annie.” The hacker group also sent a warning to the studios’ employees that internal data would be made public “if you don’t obey.”
The leaked salary information is the first to target the stars of “The Interview,” which is rumored to be the reason cyber hackers have singled out Sony Pictures.
Rogen was reportedly paid $8.4 million, while co-star Franco allegedly earned $6.5 million, Bloomberg reports. In addition, Britney Spears’ ex-husband Kevin Federline, who has a cameo in the film, was reportedly paid $5,000.
Other leaked info from the film includes $250 reportedly allotted for a prop described as a “table of weed, coke, pills and panties,” but cost $241.
The comedy, about two talk-show hosts (Franco and Rogen) recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, has angered the country’s officials, with his representatives blasting the film’s release as “an act of war” in a letter to the United Nations earlier this year.
A spokesman for North Korean's mission to the United Nations did not deny being responsible for the cyber-attack, telling the BBC on Tuesday that “the hostile forces are relating everything to the DPRK (North Korea).”
Today, an unidentified spokesman for North Korea's powerful National Defense Commission finally denied responsibility for the attack but acknowledged that it “might be a righteous deed of the supporters and sympathizers” of the North’s call for the world to turn out in a “just struggle” against U.S. imperialism. The statement carried in state media said further;
We do not know where in America the Sony Pictures is situated and for what wrongdoings it became the target of the attack, nor (do) we feel the need to know about it. But what we clearly know is that the Sony Pictures is the very one which was going to produce a film abetting a terrorist act while hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of” North Korea.
So far sensitive information about studio employees, including executives’ salaries and employee performance reviews have been leaked online. Sony confirmed the hacking in a memo to staff on Tuesday, and the following day refuted a report that North Korea was responsible for the hacking, adding that the investigation to uncover the culprit was still ongoing.
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