Yet another footer in the annals of the continuing PSN debacle, “Hacker” group Anonymous has divulged a press release to Sony. The release (entitled “Sony, I am Disappoint”) address the issue of Sony bring up Anonymous’ name in the recent press releases and statements to government officials. Excerpts of the release after the jump.
Yesterday, an article appeared in Financial Times, alleging Anonymous’ involvement in the data and identity theft of some hundred million users of Sony’s Playstation Network and Sony Online Entertainment. This crime is now being investigated by the Homeland Security Agency (HSA), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and other legal entities.
…Here, Anonymous wishes to lay out our case against these allegations and false assumptions:
First, let us consider a different article by Menn published on the Financial Times website and entitled “Hackers Warned of Arrest” [2]…. Confident in his assertion, he attempted to sell this and other pieces of so-called “intelligence” about the nature of Anonymous to the U.S. FBI.
His information, however, was incorrect… it was not until 2008 that Anonymous became a true display of “power in numbers”. Organised protests against the “Church” of Scientology were staged in over 140 cities around the world, forever associating the Guy Fawkes mask and the right to protest with the movement.
Second, just like Anonymous, John Doe and Joe Bloggs are placeholders, rather than proper names, and are available for free use without repercussions…
Barr and Menn did not pause to protect the integrity of their professions, but instead made clearly misinformed assumptions, and accordingly published a factually incorrect article…
Third, in the primary article, Menn claims that a “member” of Anonymous, Kayla, made comments as an apparent admission of guilt from the “leaders”. Kayla reportedly said, “If you say you are Anonymous, and do something as Anonymous, then Anonymous did it”. This statement is inherently weak; an equivalent statement would be that “I confess to being human. Humans performed the attack”. Andy Greenburg at Forbes [3] got it right.
Finally, Menn’s reference to “technical details” [1] regarding a vulnerability in Sony’s network without revealing actual content isn’t useful. Until the forensics reports are released we don’t know which exploit was used…
Menn’s anonymous source claims that “a few ops disappeared” …During the PSN downtime, Anonymous closed #opsony and put “sony” on the automatic kick list as ‘profanity’ last week.
Is all of this attention on Anonymous acting as a distraction from other problems, and overhyping the nature of the DDoS attacks? Sony’s recurring issues are beyond providing free game credits:
Sony has been accused of false billing, especially in the repairs department: customers who provided credit card details for an MMORPG are charged $150 for repairs to PS3s that they don’t own; repairs are double billed and then referred to retailers; equipment is charged $150 multiple times (2-4) for repairs that aren’t performed. [7 and Further Reading]
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Outraged about the blatant coverup and shameful misdeeds, other internet hacker groups will apparently proceed with attacks [9] over Sony’s mishandling of the matter…Apparently Sony will have to learn the hard way that corporate malfeasance will not go unpunished. When the dust settles Sony may have more to fear from a massive class action lawsuit by their user base than the brief actions of the Global Hacker Nerd Brigade, Anonymous… Let THE GAMEs begin. :>
The footer then contains several references of which they cite in their release, along with a link to their IRC, revealing them (or at least their IRC server) to be based in Russia. Take from this what you will. Personally? This has scared 15 year olds written all over it. Also, once you’re issuing press releases you sort of give up the right to be considered a loose collective of random people. All these guys who try to speak for Anon as a whole just want to feel important for once in their miserable lives.
Alright, so Sony gets hacked and all user personal information gets stolen. Anonymous then proceeds to jump up and go “SUCK IT SONY WE OWNED YOU!” But the second Homeland Security gets involved, they’re saying “W-w-well we didn’t mean we did it, when we said we did it… P-please dont tell my mommy.”
SOURCE [1]