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Target hack: The movie? Hollywood says yes

Posted at 11:56 AM, Mar 21, 2014
and last updated 2014-03-21 11:56:09-04

(CNN) — Does the computer breach at Target have the makings of a movie? Throw in a shotgun-toting security analyst, Russian hackers, drugs and a SWAT team and Hollywood appears to think so.

Sony has bought the rights to a New York Times article about Brian Krebs, the security blogger who was the first to expose December’s security breach at Target, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The article, “Reporting From the Web’s Underbelly,” was written by Nicole Perlroth and details how Krebs’ blog about cybercrime has prompted criminals to hack him repeatedly, send heroin and excrement to his home and falsely accuse him of murder.

Hence, the 12-gauge shotgun he keeps by his side while writing.

“A lot of what Brian does would scare the hell out of traditional newsroom editors,” Russ Walker, Krebs’s former editor at The Washington Post, said in the Times article. “I don’t think he crossed the lines journalistically, but he was living a different type of experience.”

As many as 40 million customers had their personal information compromised in the Target breach. Krebs found out about it through sources in the hacker underworld and was the first to contact Target about it.

The movie is expected to be a cyberthriller written by Richard Wenk, whose credits include “16 Blocks,” “The Mechanic” and “The Expendables 2.”

The-CNN-Wire
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