The chief executive of Sony Pictures, Michael Lynton, participated in an interview with Associated Press (AP) on Thursday to speak about the widely publicised cyberattack from late 2014. Reuters described the hack as "the most destructive on a private company on U.S. soil" on Friday.
Mr Lynton likened the attack, which was perpetrated by the "Guardians of Peace" just prior to the Thanksgiving Day holiday, to a break-and-enter robbery:
"They came in the house, stole everything, then burned down the house ... They destroyed servers, computers, wiped them clean of all the data and took all the data."
Shortly following the "home invasion", personal information for thousands of current and former workers, including Social Security numbers and salary details, appeared online. Furthermore, five Sony-produced movies, including an unreleased motion picture, appeared on file-sharing websites, and a massive amount of emails was shared with the internet-using public.
The subsequent uproar over the uncertainty regarding the release of "The Interview" garnered the vast majority of the media attention afterward. However, the nature of the email content, a portion of which became highly embarrassing, left a lasting impression. Due to correspondence related to President Barack Obama, Sony Pictures co-chairman, Amy Pascal, has kept a low profile since the attack.
Mr Lynton informed reporters that the recovery process continues, and normality at the studio will resume soon. While email access is expected to be functioning next week, it could take over a month to restore the computer network. In the meantime, the studio has been dispensing manually written cheques to keep up with the payment of employees.
The CEO told AP that senior management has not been held responsible for the harmful incident, and relayed feedback from cybersecurity firm Mandiant, which believes that the vast majority of America's corporations could have experienced the same thing. The severity of the cyberattack was highlighted by Mr Lynton during the interview: "... one of the investigators said to me, whoever wrote this software was very, very angry".