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Sony Hackers Send Employees Cryptic Emails Threatening Their Families

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Sony Pictures in Culver City (Photo by Blake Handley via the Creative Commons on Flickr)

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The Sony hackers are now sending Sony employees ominous messages that threaten them and their families. The email was received by employees on Friday, Variety reports. It began, "I am the head of GOP who made you worry."

Sony's issue with hackers began on November 24 when employees logged in to find a picture of a skeleton with the words "Hacked by #GOP," and things escalated from there. The group responsible for the hacking later identified themselves as 'Guardians of Peace.'

Friday's email continued:

"Removing Sony Pictures on earth is a very tiny work for our group which is a worldwide organization. And what we have done so far is only a small part of our further plan. It’s your false (sic) if you think this crisis will be over after some time. All hope will leave you and Sony Pictures will collapse. This situation is only due to Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures is responsible for whatever the result is."
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The letter encouraged each recipient to sign their name "to object the false (sic) of the company at the email address below if you don't want to suffer damage. If you don't, not only you but your family will be in danger."

Previously, hackers crippled Sony's email and other essential systems, and then released films and scripts, as well as personal information about the company and its employees.

An earlier theory suspected North Korea of plotting the attack to retaliate against The Interview, a Sony film starring James Franco and Seth Rogen in which the two play celebrity journalists who are assigned by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong-un. The North Korean government is not amused by the film and a spokesman called it "an act of war."

North Korea has denied the attack, the BBC reports, but some researchers have noticed similarities between the Sony hack and a hack carried out on South Korea last year. While North Korea was never the confirmed perpetrator of that attack, the South Korean government blamed North Korea.

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