BuzzFeed reporter who got emails from Sony hackers
This week on 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft visited Sony Picture's 44-acre studio lot and learned just how crippling North Korea's cyberattack was for the entertainment company.
The hackers destroyed 3,000 computers and 800 servers in retaliation for Sony Picture's satirical film, "The Interview," which depicted the assassination of North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un. Before they struck, the hackers collected a treasure trove of data from Sony. Afterward, they leaked it to a handful of reporters at online news organizations.
One of those reporters was BuzzFeed's Matt Zeitlin. So, Steve Kroft and 60 Minutes producer Graham Messick paid a visit to the BuzzFeed newsroom to talk with the young reporter and have a look at the emails from the hackers.
"The English isn't entirely recognizable," Zeitlin says of the emails. "It almost seems like they're kind of trying to be like the Joker in Batman....it was always weird."
At first, Zeitlin told 60 Minutes, he was suspicious of the emails and didn't open the links -- until he saw another online media outlet, Fusion, making blockbuster headlines with the stolen Sony material.
Zeitlin quickly enlisted help from his IT department (in case there were security risks) and then he, along with other BuzzFeed reporters, began sifting through eight enormous data dumps.
With so much to read, Zeitlin decided to search for emails without a subject line, thinking those messages might have been more private and impulsively written. He was right.
Among other things, he found and reported on a series of ill-conceived jokes about President Obama written by Sony exec Amy Pascal.
Zeitlin tells 60 Minutes he stands by every story he published. His only regret? That he didn't publish more.
Editor's Note: This segment was originally published on April 12, 2015.