Slashdot Mirror
Sony Officially Blames Anonymous For PSN Hack
H_Fisher writes "In a letter to Congress, Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony's board of directors, blames hacker group Anonymous for making possible the theft of gamers' personal information. 'What is becoming more and more evident is that Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes,' Hirai wrote. He also indicated that Sony waited two days before notifying the FBI of the theft."
Sony said on Wednesday that Anonymous targeted it several weeks ago using a denial of service attack in protest of Sony defending itself against a hacker in federal court in San Francisco.
This quote is more disturbing as far as I am concerned. Sony was not defending itself against Geohot, since Geohot never attacked Sony nor did Geohot sue Sony. Geohot was defending himself in a lawsuit filed by Sony.
Talk about slanting things...
Palm trees and 8
There is no official "anonymous" and there is no leadership or command structure. It's a concept, an idea to describe an emergent system of hacktivism. Saying anonymous is responsible for this (or anything) is like saying democracy is responsible for causing the wars in the middle east. You're mixing up an idea, an ethos, with an organization.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
If you read the letter (which is made needlessly annoying by the fact that it's scanned in and the raw text isn't made available, fuck you very much Sony), you'll see that on page 2 they explain:
When Sony Online Entertainment discovered this past Sunday afternoon that data from its servers had been stolen, it also discovered that the intruders had placed a file on one of those servers named "Anonymous" with the words "We are Legion."
So that's how they come to that conclusion. Which I guess means we can blame Anonymous, in so much as anyone calling themselves Anonymous is Anonymous.
Not that I really believe that the attacker really is "Anonymous," but they do make a good scape goat. And who knows, maybe the attacker did decide that this attack might as well be carried out under the "anonymous" banner.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Anonymous disagrees with you.
"The attackers went one better than this, however: they dumped the user database for rootkit.com, listing the e-mail addresses and password hashes for everyone who'd ever registered on the site."
There was also the little bit about posting personal info about spouses and children of HBGary employees.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Sony said on Wednesday that Anonymous targeted it several weeks ago using a denial of service attack in protest of Sony defending itself against a hacker in federal court in San Francisco.
Meanwhile in reality:
Sony said on Wednesday that Anonymous targeted it several weeks ago using a denial of service attack in protest of Sony attacking a hacker in a hopeless attempt to control information that had already slipped far out of it's control in federal court in San Francisco.
If you read their statements, they blame Anonymous for DDOSing Mastercard and Visa for the breach on PSN. They spread Faux News style "information" by saying something that works out to "Anonymous was attacking people because of us (and a smaller attack on PSN that wasn't active at the time of the intrusion) and then the attack happened. We aren't saying that Anonymous did it, we are saying it looks like there's a link - We report - You decide." Of course, for making fun of our favorite un-news group, I'm sure I'll get modded/flamed, but it's something people are getting used to seeing in the news. When deliberate lies are spread as "fair and balanced news" from formerly reputable news organizations, why should we expect any less from corporations?
It's possible the two were linked. Perhaps Sony deliberately reduced security to improve uptime with a DDOS. Perhaps the targeted attack was planned and ready for a while and they waited until Sony was busy with other security matters or wanted to deflect the blame. "Linked" doesn't mean "caused by" or even "influenced by" in that the attacks would likely have happened even if Anonymous didn't exist. But that the timing may have been adjusted, however slightly, by Anonymous's actions. But it's not like someone DDOSing Sony from Anonymous said "Wow, I just hacked the Gibson, let's see what's in this garbage file..."
Learn to love Alaska
Anyone who has read TFA will not find this the least bit insightful, though the Slashdot headline is extremely misleading as usual. Sony said they had been the "victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes," but did not blame Anonymous for that. They said they were under a DDOS attack from Anonymous at the same time as the security breach and the two events may or may not have been related.
Of course there's a difference.
Just because party A and party B are both anonymous doesn't mean they're the same party. It just means you can't pick either of them out of a crowd.
The Anonymous group which has been anti-Sony recently is huge, amorphous organization with goals that change from day to day depending on what they feel like doing that day. Think of Anonymous as an online flash mob.
The anonymous group that hacked Sony? Who knows. They could be highly organized under a feudal system where failure is rewarded with the opportunity to commit seppuku. Although this group is anonymous, they may have none of the attributes that make Anonymous what it is.
I guess the problem you're having is that you're equating anonymous with Anonymous. One is a description and the other is the name of an organization which happens to be descriptive.
If (as we suspect) Anonymous had nothing to do with the hack, then all Sony is doing is trying to vilify an organization that opposes it. In other words they're putting the blame on someone they don't like in the hopes of lowering public opinion of them.
The Slashdot headline isn't just misleading, it's a complete fabrication.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman