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Geohot Denies Involvement In PSN Hack Attack

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thats-what-i'd-say-too dept.

Stoobalou writes "Soon-to-be-celebrity hacker and thorn in Sony's side George 'Geohot' Hotz has denied any involvement in the ongoing breach at the PlayStation Network. The 21-year-old hacker — who is best known for creating the first software-based hack for the iPhone, and getting hypervisor access and exposing the root key to the PlayStation 3 — has made it clear that he had nothing to do with filleting Sony's online gaming servers, saying 'I'm not crazy.'"

16 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Who the hell cares? by Random2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would he be involved? Holtz is becoming a useless keyword to generate 'news'.

    Stop pulling these stories off the hose just because there's nothing else interesting.

    --
    "Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
    1. Re:Who the hell cares? by tysonedwards · · Score: 2

      I also unequivocally deny being involved in this act.

      Just 6,775,235,698 more to check before we can know who really was involved.

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
    2. Re:Who the hell cares? by Maestro4k · · Score: 2

      Why would he be involved? Holtz is becoming a useless keyword to generate 'news'.

      Stop pulling these stories off the hose just because there's nothing else interesting.

      Lots of people have been blaming this on Hotz, either directly or indirectly. I've seen numerous people commenting to that effect on the stories Ars Technica has posted about the PSN being down. So I don't blame him for publicly stating he's not involved, and I don't blame /. for posting it. He deserves to clear his name.

  2. Suppress one Geohot, by unity100 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And you will create hundreds of new Geohots.

    such is the rule of internet underground since days of old. the worst anyone can do, is to create conditions for a crusade against themselves in regard to morals. after that, it doesnt matter who or what you are - they will hack you. and the ones doing the hacking wont be small fish.

    the bigger the bastardry, the greater honors those who hack them gains in the internet underworld.

    but who am i telling these to - anyone who had had participated in anything in the early stages of internet, knows these.

    --
    Read radical news here
    1. Re:Suppress one Geohot, by ryanov · · Score: 2

      Incidentally, he gets his nickname from the same place I got mine -- we apparently went to the same HS and that's the way usernames are assigned there (bergen.org). Funny how many of us still use them for one thing or another.

    2. Re:Suppress one Geohot, by steelfood · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There already are laws for breaking and entering into other people's computer systems. They're already ridiculous.

      The problem is, these people probably aren't from the United States, and hence not subject to the laws of the United States. The internet transcends national boundaries. That means whatever it might be, the laws of any one country cannot apply to the whole of the internet. And that means there'll always be holes that people with an agenda can take advantage of.

      So while places like Australia or China or the U.K. can enforce their own set of internet usage rules among their own citizens, they cannot do the same on citizens of other countries. The most they can do is cut those countries off from their own networks, but that'd require all the backbone ISPs servicing the country to cooperate (e.g. the Great Firewall). And there are still ways around it.

      That's the beauty of the internet. And that's the major failing of people who've been trying to turn the internet "respectable." It's not and never will fully be, because the definition of legal ceases to hold meaning once you cross national borders. Doing business on the internet is dangerous, and acting douchy the way Sony's been doing is just asking to be noticed by everybody (Sony's douchbaggery is a special kind of stupid--instead of being douchy to just their customers in countries where they have legal recourse like what Amazon might do when it files an obvious patent, they did it to all of their users worldwide irrespective of local laws).

      If this was the product of some Eastern European hit, Sony can do nothing short of paying those countries' governments off. But that might be more costly and less effective than if they were to shut down PSN entirely.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    3. Re:Suppress one Geohot, by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      Yeah well it wasn't new by '93 because we have the day which will not be spoken of.

      "me too"

      I still have nightmares.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  3. The public at large isn't really picking this up.. by seanvaandering · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Anyone who thinks I was involved in any way with this, I'm not crazy, and would prefer to not have the FBI knocking on my door. Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool, hacking into someone else's server and stealing databases of user info is not cool. You make the hacking community look bad, even if it is aimed at douches like Sony."

    Here's the other half that doesn't usually get picked up - people are generally apathetic to this whole situation. Many people don't even know who Geohot is, and most likely don't care either. The ones who are most vocal about the network being offline are the ones who are online 24/7 anyways. Although i'm addressing this to a crowd that generally basement dwells, people generally have lives and most won't even notice. I have hundred and hundreds of "friends" on Facebook, some who I know are heavily into technology and console gaming, and practically nothing has been mentioned except for what i'm seeing posted on /. and similar technology related blogs and news aggregators.

    tldr: Geohot is taking advantage by not taking advantage, and generally no one really cares outside of the circle.

  4. Re:Next on /. ... by Riceballsan · · Score: 2

    TBH This dosn't sound like anon lately, DDOS sure, but stealing information without posting it as a giant public torrent. Honestly if it were true hacktivism I'd expect to see censored or uncensored CC#'s somewhere out there. (censored as in just enough digits to prove it's legit, but without giving the numbers to potential identity thieves. That would in my view be the biggest way to get sony in the largest amount of trouble possible. The fact that it hasn't happened leads me to be suspicious of if either the information wasn't gathered correctly, or it is actually a CC fraud attempt using anon as a scapegoat, GH isn't even a sanely believable scapegoat, this isn't even close to his style.

  5. Obligatory /. response top 5 by DrPeper · · Score: 2

    In regards to the perpetrator of the PSN attack.

    1. The Master Control Program, who does he calculate he is??!
    2. Sorry I put the new X-Files Collector edition BluRay in and it went crazy.
    3. I for one welcome our new PSN overlords.
    4. Still think Skynet isn't real??
    5. The W.O.P.R. was running another simulation.

  6. Didn't create first software iphone hack.... by iCEBaLM · · Score: 2

    These guys did: http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

    1. Re:Didn't create first software iphone hack.... by Mad+Leper · · Score: 2

      Very true, same with the PS3 keys and in fact just about every hack this idiot has laid claim to.

      Geohot is a braggart, a thief of other hackers work and a shameless self-promoter

  7. Re:Like he could really win by Rakarra · · Score: 2

    Actually, if you read through the legal proceedings, he was on very solid footing to do just that

    Footing doesn't actually matter if you don't have the resources to fight the case. Defending a case like this against a plaintiff like Sony is extremely expensive, regardless of how in the right you are.

  8. Re:Lost Interest in GeoHot... by networkBoy · · Score: 2

    So do I, and it blows.
    I had a similar experience (going against Farmers Insurance), but fortunately for me it was a trademark,libel,cycbersquatting, defamation, confusion of source case, which the courts are much more literate about. It never went beyond "we're going to sue you into oblivion little man" ... "oh yeah? Here's my rights, bite me".

    It is that the courts are illiterate that the Sony's of the world chose to sue. Once the courts are literate about the issues then the lawsuits tend to stop sooner in the process because both sides know that the issue really isn't murky enough to require a judge && || jury.
    -nB

    --
    whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  9. Re:The public at large isn't really picking this u by exomondo · · Score: 2

    or are you another Sony Shill?

    Im not sure you know what a 'shill' is.

  10. Re:The public at large isn't really picking this u by exomondo · · Score: 2

    I'm actually suprised people are still supporting a Video Game console with a shockingly (almost criminal) failure rate

    That's old news, pre-XBox S. Anyway they extended warranty to 3 years to cover the defect on the old xbox.

    massive levels of piracy & online cheating

    what's this massive level of online cheating?

    no freedom to use your own peripherals or storage devices.

    my own usb sticks, ipod, FAT32-formatted usb hard drives, etc... work fine, just as they do on my ps3.