Just a couple weeks ago, on November 24th, Sony Pictures Entertainment, the diverse media company, was compromised by hackers. The hacks temporarily disabled the website, dispersed terabytes of data, including unreleased films and other information to file sharing websites and reporters. This is not the first time that websites have been shut down. Groups such as “Anonymous” are responsible for shutting down the Cleveland Police Department’s website not long ago after a twelve year old boy was shot and killed by an officer. This instance however, is indeed one the the largest scale sweeps of a website of this magnitude.

Experts have begun to blame North Korean hackers over the past weeks, saying that the hacking codes were written in Korean. If this is true, than the North Koreans have successfully committed an act of CNA, or Computer Network Attack. Many are saying that this attack is in response to a movie called “The Interview”, produced by Sony, starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, who play CIA agents who make an assassination attempt on Kim Jong-un, the leader of the communist state.

It is quite funny to think that Kim Jong-un got so pent up that he decided to attack Sony, but all laughs aside, it is concerning to Americans, as this is one of the first uses of new hacking techniques that are able to cripple websites. With this, experts within both the FBI and NSA are fearing an impending wake of widespread attacks which will have the capability of compromising people’s computers and entire main stream websites.

The reports are certainly startling and the threat of what people on the other side of the world are capable of doing now should most definitely be taken seriously. As always, be cautious, and act consciously while on the web, one bad click, and you could put yourself in a world of trouble. The likelihood of all your personal information being stolen and your computer being destroyed is quite low, but it is important to be safe anyway. If you see something suspicious, whether it be on an unfamiliar website or an odd email, do not click it. Cyber attacks are real, but the truth of the matter is, unless you are a multi-billion dollar company that goes out of your way to make a movie about killing the leader of a declared enemy of the state, you can prevent your information from being stolen, for the most part.