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Anonymous Denies Sony Claims of Disruption, Credit Info Theft
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday, in a letter to Congress, Sony detailed the steps they were taking to resolve the issues that have been plaguing them since the PlayStation Network and SOE online components were hacked, claiming to have found evidence linking the crime to Anonymous. Now, Anonymous has responded."
Now, Anonymous has responded.
No, one person has responded. As has been touted many many many times by people on Slashdot whenever news organizations do it, there is no central authority, there is no registered list. So yes, while that clique may not have done it, does not mean another clique didn't.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Blame your own incompetence on a well known public entity. A trick as old as the hills.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
I'd like to think that this has come about due to someone at Sony saying that the act was done by "an anonymous hacker" being misunderstood as "an Anonymous hacker".
People need to research more before assuming anything. Sony explicitly stated they found verifiable evidence it was Anonymous, as the files the hacker had left behind said "We are Anonymous. We are legion." How that can be confused for anything else is beyond me.
They're like-minded individuals who coalesce to serve a shared whim at a particular time. If so, then it is indeed difficult to pin any particular action or crime upon its body for prosecution, but at the same time it is equally difficult, if not more so, to unpin any accusations. I think we're seeing here one of the downsides to organizations whose structure of responsibility is nearly flat, where not only does the left hand not know what the right is doing, each hair on each finger doesn't know what the rest are doing. In light of their historic antics, those who align themselves with Anonymous fight an uphill battle to shed themselves of ill-repute whenever any such indictments surface. But they get no remorse from me -- it's a choice they've made and a reality they have to deal with.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Sorry, can't have it both ways. You can't accept credit when a loner decides to hack something, then deny credit when someone else attributes their actions to anonymous.
With no central leadership or community registration, any damn fool can do whatever they want and pin it on you guys.
It's the nature of the beast you've created; in any group there will ALWAYS be those in it for ideological reasons as well as those looking to decrease personal culpability.
I was under the impression that *anyone* can be Anonymous. If that's the case, Anonymous can't prove that Anonymous didn't do it.
If the response was anonymous, how do we know that the people who responded were the same as those who DDOSed? This, in a nutshell, is the idiocy of treating Anonymous as a group of people, however loosely organized. It would be better to call them what they are in this particular instance: Sony customers who are really pissed off.
Here's a rather wild (or maybe not) speculation I've come up with:
The CIA, already aware of the PSN vulnerability, has a lone hacker take down the network and leave behind a tag which points a finger at Anonymous which they hope causes a social backlash from many of the people that might support (if not participate in) Anonymous' activities. Possibly opening the door of certain types of legal actions concerning the internet. Or maybe China is messing with us again?
How do we know this is really from Anonymous?
Did they include all of the required information in their identification?
Is there even a check-box on the form for "We are Legion?"
The way it looked to me, it was if they were planning to spraypaint a buiding when they noticed smoke coming out of it.
Do you think that, since sony have begun work with security firms and some US govt agencies have become involved they might be trying to draw anonymous out, even though they may not be responsible.
I mean anonymous generally do things for their own ideological reasons, a lot of people will bite when baited on such matters.
Keep your heads down guys! me thinks they are playing wack a mole!
Well, they would, wouldn't they?
Couldn't some 15 year-old who was feeling particularly bored written that response?
this actually took intelligence , ya know the kind that they dont have. ITS an inside job and SONY dont know who.
HA HA is all i have to say
Ignore that other guy. We haz your credit cards.
It should be possible to defend onself, without having to point fingers at other people. Anonymous is acting like Sony:
"5. It should be remembered that several federal contractors such as HBGary and Palantir have been caught planning a variety of unethical and potentially criminal conspiracies by which to discredit the enemies of their clients. This is not a theory - this is a fact that has been reported at great length by dozens of journalists with major publications. Insomuch as that our enemies have either engaged in or planned to engage in false flag efforts, it should not be surprising that many of the journalists who have covered us, who know who we are and what motivates us - and who have alternatively seen the monstrous behavior of those large and "respectable" firms that are all too happy to throw aside common decency at the behest of such clients as Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - also have their suspicions that some capable party performed this operation as a means by which to do great damage to Anonymous in the public eye. Those who consider such a prospect to be somehow unlikely are advised to read about what was proposed by Team Themis in their efforts to destroy Wikileaks, and should otherwise take a few minutes to learn about COINTELPRO and other admitted practices by the U.S. intelligence community.
"The fact is that Anonymous has brought a great deal of discomfort to powerful entities such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Palantir, and much of the federal government; the Justice Department in particular is likely unhappy that our efforts revealed that it was they themselves who recommended the now-discredited "law firm" Hunton & Williams to Bank of America in order that the latter might better be able to fight back against Wikileaks. All of this is now public record"
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
...Right!
Even the US has in its founding document exposing government corruption. It is known as the Declaration of Independence and it even goes into exposing government wrongs and stating its not only the right or the people but their duty to keep their government in line or put it off to create a new government..
There is also the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. To really understand the contents of these documents is to have a sword and shield against the growing number of those in government and their business associates committing or verging on acts of treason. There is a reason why these documents came into existence. The Boston Tea party's real meaning of "no taxation without representation" wasn't to have some lying politician getting away with whatever they wanted by claiming they represent you with what ever they do, including creating more taxes. It mean that there was value received in return for the taxes paid, you received some benefit representing the taxes you paid and that doesn't mean a politician speaking for you as that could have been done across the ocean..
Acts of Treason against the founding documents and even the historic event of the Boston Tea party are documented. But these act are not by just some citizen but by citizens that work in government positions including positions of the elected. It is clear in the documents that in order to be charged with treason you have to be a US citizen. So how is it that an elected politician Doesn't know this (J. Lieberman) and how many others in government have put off such documents and even passed bills, laws and amendments counter to the founding documents? I.E. the Declaration of Independence identification of rights and duty of the citizens to keep their government in check vs. the changes, including recent, regarding what qualifies as treason. It is not uncommon to claim another has done wrong in effort to hide the fact the claimer themselves are the guilty party.
NO, they are not allowed to change the Founding Documents!!! Doing so is an act of treason! And who's right and duty is it to straighten it out?
When you drive on rural back roads, and see the stop signs full of bullet holes, that was Anonymous.
When you open a school textbook or library book and see penises drawn on everything even resembling an animal, let alone a person, that was Anonymous.
Anonymous is simply everyone who thinks nobody is looking.
Sounds to me like Sony has made up the whole hacking thing to try and get public support against Anon
Anonymous is the ultimate form of democracy. It is the unwashed masses, taking a whim upon themselves, and challenging the remainder of society to vote with (or against) them. They are the power of the masses, and at the same time, they have the mentality of a mob.
Take a look at recent events. American SEALs assassinate OBL despite a 30YO executive order banning such actions. No trial, no jury. Just straight to the execution. The legality of it is worthy of being questioned - but the vast majority of Americans support the action - which grants the senate the impetus to democractically 'make it legal'.
This is the definition of democracy. If you get enough people together, who agree on something, it becomes law. It doesn't have to be moral or just.
Anonymous is simply the mob who agree. They are democracy manifest in all its failings. And characteristic of all democracies, the loudest voice has the appearance of steering the ship. Anyone who claims to speak for Anonymous clearly doesn't understand it. And anyone who speaks against it is in the same boat.
I hope Anonymous stops responding, if indeed they have. This smells of bait to me.
High profile hack. Blame Anonymous. Wait for denials. Track denial communications to source. Arrest source.
Recent US activity in Pakistan suggests they know how to follow a courier.
Of course, maybe I'm just paranoid...
"Anonymous" as a targetable group? There's sort of an interesting semantic fan-out here. It's kind of like calling a movie "Closed For Repairs".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
'Anonymous' (at least in this article) refers to the group AnonOps Communications, who host the numerous IRC channels, have a loose leader base, publish various 'flyers' of propaganda, and are the people behind 'Operation: Payback'. There is a difference between the group itself and an anonymous hacker, even if the anonymous hacker was acting out in the 'name' of anonymous.
what this article is saying is that the 'AnonOps' group had no involvement in the stealing of sony data, even if an anonymous hacker did.
references:
http://anonops.blogspot.com/
http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/04/we-didnt-do-it-sony-incompetent.html
http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/04/anonymous-hacks-westboro-baptist-church.html
http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=anonops
They said they found a file called "Anonymous" with "We Are Legion" inside. They didn't draw conclusions. At question 7 when asked if they know of the individual(s) responsible for the break-in, they say "no".
Please stop misreporting this just to troll your readers.
Sony gave factual answers, when the allegedly well-informed tech press can't even read it without stating information that wasn't in the release, what chance is there for accurate info to get out?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Why don't the heads of the large corporate act as grown ups? they all like to speak big words, deny the obvious things, finding excuses.
Anon has been a disbanded group of sorts with many cells so to speak of different groups that dont work together.
How exactly does a orginization with no leadership and many different splintered off groups say they didnt do it? Just because one group didnt doesnt mean another didnt do it. And who exactly is this anon spokesperson anyway?
And to be frank, how do we know its even then. Their name alone would imply no one knows who they are, so if we dont know who they are then how do we know its really them?
I mean they threatened sony because they took geodumbz to court for cracking their security (and they were right do it. Hacking a ps3 is one thing, but breaking security that allows real damage is completely another. He was wrong and sony was right), then they attacked them disrupting psn service and now they have been attacked using the same method. I find it hard to believe anon didnt do anything.
The worst part of this whole thing is that something like 1 in 10 people in North America at the very least probably have SOME motivation in their background to do something like this to embarrass Sony without having to get Anonymous involved.
Generally a higher portion of those 1 in 10 would be tech savvy folks. I would expect 50% or greater(almost all of the people I know that boycott sony would be in the "tech savvy" group, based on that anecdotal evidence I'd estimate 90%+ but since I'm pulling numbers out of my ass I'm going with more reasonable ones, they hurt less on the way out)
So, even allowing for the fact that those numbers could be way out of wack )but be honest with yourself, probably aren't that far off, if anything, thanks to that rootkit scandal, I'm under estimating), you've got 1 million + people who could potentially have had the motivation and the means to compromise such a shoddy setup.
Oh, and those numbers are pre-PSN scandal. Now you've probably got an extra million+ with either means or access to means and motivation to do something.
Have you ever posted anything as Anonymous or any variation of that name?
uhh. Yeah. I guess so.
Guilty! Bam!
Building a case against Anonymous is like chasing your own shadow to the end of the rainbow.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
we are all anonymous.
Anonymous could not organise a fart at a chilly eating contest.
I am a green hand on this aspect. I have no idea now scarpehogan
“We discovered a file making a clear reference to ‘Username unknown,’” the company said in a letter to the US Congress on Wednesday, “and a blank user icon which therefore was ... anonymous! D’you see what that means? It means George Hotz and his hacker friends are loathsome criminal masterminds! So obviously we can’t be held liable for negligence in the face of forces like these. In conclusion, give us money.”
http://rocknerd.co.uk
maybe it was just an 'Anonymous' comment not a comment by 'Anonymous'
Not that Anonymous are terrorists -- far from it.
But one of the challenges in making peace with loose organizations like Hamas, Mahdi Militia, or the IRA -- just to give a few examples -- and while the leadership of the organization legitimately wants a cease fire, they're not in control of their members. If some guy becomes disillusioned by a peace deal and wants to bomb something, he's going to and the organization he or she is part of can't stop them.
I wouldn't put it past them to be the same thing here. And again, regardless of what the 'leadership' does, until they start turning over members of their community to law enforcement when someone violates their code of ethics (in addition to the law), the acts being engaged in may continue to go more extreme.
That said, Sony's screwed if they think they can work this out without "negotiating with the enemy" or else seriously beefing up security.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
If I recall correctly, Sony never actually claimed that Anonymous were behind the infiltration. All they said was that the recent DDoSing from Anonymous was annoying and somehow distracted them enough for someone to leave massive holes in their security. It was really just a retarded way of trying to shovel blame on to someone else, but they were not actually pointing the finger directly at Anonymous. They were merely saying Anonymous it was partly Anonymous's fault the PSN was hacked.
As Anonymous does not have a proper organisation, Anon cannot determine if Anon did or did not do something.
Wrong, Anonymous has previously witnessed another Anon who claimed to be Anon posting CC details of persons they did not like.
Indeed.
Anonymous will not forget these false statements that Anonymous made just now and Anonymous will not forgive.
We are Anonymous. We do not forgive. We do not forget.
I haven't been able to log into EQ in days. Clearly, this "Anonymous" is a terrorist organization that seeks to strike at core American values. Seal Team Six is on the way.
Ooops...does this mean I've blown my anonymity? Guess I'll just have to confiscate /.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I BLAME Matt Welsh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wish the damn editors would hurry up and finish blowing him so someone could change the quote of the day.
Think about it, Sony needs to blame someone and so they blame a group that cannot be quantified or prosecuted and in turn Sony can't be sued for defamation. If anyone thinks that Sony actually believes their own evidence, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you. Personally I'm furious at Sony. I am one of the people that had his identity stolen. What kind of company stores valuable information in such a careless manager? I have been a faithful Sony dupe since the PS2 and the only reason I haven't switched to the XBOX is because I thought that Sony technology was better (let the flaming begin). Now for the first time I'm not sure what gaming system to use.
If there is no God then free will is an illusion.
Or have all Slashbot favorite entities merged into one? We can call it GNU WikiBuntuDroidNonymous. Like "Muad'dib" becoming a killing word....
To clarify your awesome point:
GNU - Bene Gesserit
Wiki - Orange Catholic Bible
Ubuntu - Shai Hulud
Droid - Ixian
Anonymous - Fremen
Wikileaks - Muad`dib
Information - Melange
I8-D
Anonymous' public profile makes it the convenient scapegoat for any major DDoS. "We suffered an attack! It must have been Anon! (That sounds good, anyway.)"
I suspect it will be politically facile to blame Anon for any old DDoS attack for some time to come.
Anon, to my knowledge, has no central authority and no real leadership. Saying they did it is about as vague as saying the internet did it.
It's very possible the hacker(s?) were part of Anon, but if so, so what? If anything, that makes them look worse...
I personally see Anon as a group of stupid kids online, are you seriously admitting that kids could take you down? That's pretty sad.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
But, maybe they were forced to do it while John Travolta held a gun to their head and Halle Berry gave them a blowjob.
...or maybe Halle Berry held a gun to their head, and John Travolta gave them a blow job...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The jails are full of people that didn't do it.
For me, I say, what part of 'Don't trust that bully SONY with anything at all, much less your credit data' did the community miss? As a evil corporation they remain to this day unrepentant for their past offenses and continue to use a blunt club in response to any customer complaints.
It doesn't matter who stole the private information at Sony, because Anonymous has admitted to commiting criminal acts to begin with.
No matter how you cut it, they are breaking the rule of law - and good laws at that - in disrupting the lawful business of others. Did they impact Sony? Sure. But they also impacted their customers. They can try to play Robin Hood all day long, but in the end, they are little more than a bunch of spoiled punks who have found power in the shadowy company of others.
Bully for you, kids. But you still broke the law. And in doing so, may have inadvertantly provided cover for more serious acts. You can try to run from that all you want, but you are complicit regardless.
I think I forgot to log in, posting as "Anonymous coward" does not mean I'm one of *those* anonymous cowards, just to be clear. Thanks.
Grow the hell up.
In other words, some part of the infantile emotionally-retarded "collective" didn't penetrate Sony's network, but some other part of the infantile emotionally-retarded "collective" did. But, they were forced to do it while Halle Berry held a gun to John Travolta's head so that he gave them all blowjobs.
Seriously get your factzorz straight! >:|
Your conclusion is valid and your argument flawed: the beauty of the Laughing Man arc is that it is not tidy enough to make such a claim nor counterclaim and this makes it a rare example from popular culture of advanced civics education.
Because that is how reality is.
The world is not binary, not even the digital one --only the substrate is--, there never has to be one answer and seldom is (and never ever is in Anonymous). Self-conflicting facts can all be true at the same time and often are. They can even contribute to and support each other.
Also: :D My hunch is we've seen nothing yet compared to the mighty future >:)
Suck Fony
The customers should have seen it coming, Sony themselves are known criminals (it is not sentencing that makes a criminal but the criminal act itself).
I remember "we will rule the world"; Anonymous is being underestimated beyond belief, don't people understand what's going on at all? Whoever controls the bits... :D
Everything everywhere under human control has been moving in the right direction in 2011, cheers and enjoy the biggest year in human history! :)
The author(s) of the file could well have been an individual or faction within the target company acting out of self-interest rather than altruism and betting on somebody somewhere eventually taking advantage of the information in fairly predictable ways thus enabling them to benefit.
It's not like it isn't happening in reality all the time :D
Politics, economics, security, social relations, industry, entertainment, religion, nation, group, family, individual, meme, context.
One thing is certain; the originator of the file remained anonymous.
Want to win? Make all rights and wrongs join as one and the same outcome.
1. Anonymous has never been known to have engaged in credit card theft.
This is incorrect. I have witnessed at least one time when anonymous stole credit card number of their target and used it to send excessive amount of PS3 to his home.