Kodak NY (the original Kodak film company) has confirmed that hackers have been able to access Kodak company data, and that they’re currently in the process of working with cybersecurity experts to investigate. The hackers claim to have over 2.2 million records and that Kodak should pay up by the 18th June 2026 – or the data will be leaked.
The Eastman Kodak Company now exists in various different entities – after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2012 – they were reformed in 2013 and the main Kodak company in Rochester, New York continues to manufactures analogue film.
Outside of this the Kodak name is licensed to 3rd parties – for example, the Kodak Charmera is made by a company called RETO (who also make Kodak branded film cameras such as the Snapic A1), the Kodak PixPro compact cameras are made under license by JK Imaging Ltd (who themselves use ODM companies to manufacture the digital cameras), and Kodak’s portable printers are made by a company cammed Prinics Co. under license.
Another Kodak brand; UK based Kodak Alaris are an Information Management Solutions company that offer hardware and software for digital imaging and information management, as well as Kodak Moments – who offer retail photo printing kiosks, as well as marketing of traditional film.
Kodak’s biggest historic failings are generally considered to be Kodak’s failure to “shift to digital cameras” however, Kodak, prior to digital cameras made very few actual cameras, with only a handful of point and shoot compact cameras (pre-digital). When they did switch to making digital cameras, they again prioritised point and shoot compact cameras, whilst other brands such as Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Fujifilm and Pentax delivered high-end (and more profitable) DSLRs and Mirrorless cameras. Considering Kodak made the World’s first digital camera, and was an early pioneer of digital SLRs (Kodak DCS models made in partnership with Nikon and Canon), it’s a shame that modern Kodak cameras are reduced to toy keychain cameras, and PixPro point and shoots.
Related reading
- Kodak hits back: ‘we are not going out of business!’
- Kodak returns with a 65x zoom bridge camera, but is missing one thing
- Kodak Charmera Millennium – the viral toy camera gets a shiny Y2K upgrade
via Malwarebytes / Bleepingcomputer.
