Hackers got their hands on a number of unreleased Michael Jackson songs after attacking the Sony Music archive. Sony confirmed the hack to the BBC Monday, though would not detail which or how many of the tracks were taken in the attack.

The hack was discovered some weeks after the attacks on Sony's PlayStation Network in April 2011, though Sony took its time coming clean about it. The unreleased tracks from Michael Jackson were a byproduct of an apparent data grab of more than 50,000 digital files from the Sony Music archive. The company has yet to recover the catalog of unreleased Michael Jackson material, for which it paid $250 million after the singer died in 2009.

A source told the Sunday Times that "Everything Sony purchased from the Michael Jackson estate was compromised." Sony claimed that the hack involved "a degree of sophistication," and it has since implemented a fix.

A Wikipedia article painfully lacking in citations catalogs some of the supposedly unreleased tracks from the artist. The BBC namechecks Freddie Mercury and will.i.am as collaborators on tracks that may have been unreleased and picked up in the attack; other unreleased songs may include two with Whitney Houston backing vocals, one with Justin Timberlake, and another with Stevie Wonder.