Sony Pictures Entertainment told certain news organizations on Sunday to stop publishing information contained in documents stolen by hackers who attacked the movie studio's computer network last month, three media groups reported.
The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety published stories reporting that they had each received a letter from David Boies, an attorney for Sony, demanding that the outlets stop reporting information contained in the documents and immediately destroy them.
The studio "does not consent to your possession, review, copying, dissemination, publication, uploading, downloading or making any use" of the information, Boies wrote in the letter, according to the New York Times report.
A spokesman for Boies confirmed he sent a letter to certain media outlets on behalf of Sony but declined to discuss details.
Disclosures from the internal documents have caused turmoil at the studio, a unit of Japan's Sony Corp, and shed light on internal discussions key to the company's future. For instance, the unidentified hackers have released troves of documents that include employee salaries and financial information, marketing plans and contracts with business partners.
Sony, in a memo to staff seen by Reuters on Dec. 2, acknowledged that a large amount of data was stolen by the hackers but has declined to confirm specific documents.
Over the weekend, a message claiming to be from the Guardians of Peace, a group that says it carried out the cyber attack on Sony, warned of additional disclosures. "We are preparing for you a Christmas gift," said the message posted on a site for sharing files called Pastebin. "The gift will be larger quantities of data. And it will be more interesting."