Hackers plant bogus celebrity stories on Sony Music Ireland website

If you went to the website of Sony Music Ireland (sonymusic.ie) earlier today you would have discovered some astonishing celebrity stories:

  • Scientists have proved that the X Factor TV show is for the stupid.
  • Two members of the Irish pop band “The Script” were found dead in their backstage dressing room.
  • Rebecca Black (the teenage singer who became an internet meme after her phenomenally bad “Friday” video became a YouTube hit) has married R Kelly in Disneyland.
    Perhaps most astonishingly of all, the story claims that Miss Black has joined Sony’s security team.

If it’s true that Rebecca Black is going to be helping Sony with their computer security, then she’s going to be kept busy.

But, of course, all of the stories are fake.

Hackers appear to have broken into Sony Music Ireland’s site and planted the bogus celebrity stories. It’s just the latest in a long line of attacks upon Sony websites, and…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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