The hacking group entitled “GOP” has taken credit for the hack. GOP, or short for “Guardians of Peace”, have placed an image with a skeleton on Sony computers. They also threatened to release Sony’s top secrets to the world.
Many of the leaked copies are watermarked. This is a clear indication that the pirated movies are copies of DVD screeners. In general screeners are usually meant to help critics and award voters see movies before they have the marketing advantage or distribution of major studio releases. Among the leaked copies the following movies were already identified as being heavily downloaded by pirates: Annie, Fury, “Mr. Turner,” “Still Alice” and “To Write Love on Her Arms.”
According to a well known piracy tracking company from these titles the movie Fury was already downloaded by over 900.000 different people (counting unique IP addresses). This is now the biggest loss related to a hack attack in the movie industry since July, when movie title “Expendables 3” from Lionsgate was leaked online 3 weeks before being released in theatres. Earlier this week, 2 men from London were arrested in connection with the movie leak.
