FBI steps in to warn businesses of 'destructive' attack by hackers, as it emerges that Brad Fitt's Fury has been illegally downloaded 1.5MILLION times since it was stolen in Sony Pictures hack

FBI steps in to warn businesses of 'destructive' attack by hackers, as it emerges that Brad Fitt's Fury has been illegally downloaded 1.5MILLION times since it was stolen in Sony Pictures hack, By last night, the hotly anticipated Annie, starring Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx, had been illegally download 220,000 times, according to Excipio, an IT forensics firm that tracks breaches of copyright.

Mr Turner had been downloaded 74,000 times, Still Alice - a drama, starring Julianne Moore, about a psychologist who is found to have Alzheimer's disease - was downloaded 118,00 times and To Write Love on Her Arms had been downloaded 24,000 time.

Second World War drama Fury, starring Pitt alongside Shia LaBeouf, is currently showing at cinemas but it has not yet been released on DVD.

It was the fifth most downloaded on the popular BitTorrent file-sharing platform last week, according to TorrentFreak news website, and the tenth most popular film on the Pirate Bay file-sharing website.

According to website Re/code, Sony and security consultants were investigating the possibility that someone acting on behalf of North Korea, possibly from China, was responsible for the hacking attack.

The hack came just under a month before Sony Pictures was due to release The Interview, which is a comedy about two journalists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The Pyongyang government denounced the film as 'undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war' in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.

Re/code said a link to North Korea had not been confirmed but it had not been ruled out.
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Sony Pictures was investigating every possibility, adding no link to North Korea has been uncovered.

But North Korea has refused to deny involvement in a cyber attack.
When asked if the country was involved in the cyber attack a spokesman for the North Korean government would only reply: 'Wait and see.'

'I personally don't care if (the movie's) disrespectful to Kim because he's evil. But that's not the intent,' Rogen posted on Twitter on Sunday.

'North Korea has produced tons of propaganda films that portray America's destruction.'
The FBI's five-page, confidential 'flash' warning issued to businesses late on Monday provided some technical details about the malicious software that was used in the attack, though it did not name the victim.

An FBI spokesman declined comment when asked if the software had been used against the California-based unit of Sony Corp.