Sony finds no apparent Anonymous link to PlayStation attack

Sony finds no apparent Anonymous link to PlayStation attack

www.computerworld.com

IDG News Service - Sony said it has found no link between an attack on its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services and Internet activist group Anonymous, which had earlier targeted its systems.

The online gaming and entertainment services were taken offline on April 20 after a "very sophisticated" attack on Sony's data center in San Diego, said Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony's games subsidiary, at a Tokyo news conference. They are due to return to service later this week.

(visit the link for the full news article)



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It was a common misconception.. even here on ATS; that Anonymous was responsible for the recent catastrophic failure of the SONY Playstation network.

But it all appears as politically convenient hype...

Less than two weeks before the most recent attack, Anonymous members launched a denial of service attack against the PlayStation Network in protest at Sony's legal pursuit of hacker George Hotz. Hotz had modified the firmware of a PlayStation 3 so that it could run the Linux OS. Sony claimed the software violated the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the reverse-engineering of encryption protections.

So the idea became... "Let's blame Anonymous." Arrest warrants were issued, a plethora of threads surfaced, and many assumed the two attacks were one and the same.

Of course, insurance and legal matters must compel these kinds of statements from the leadership.

"While there may be no relation to this attack, the Sony network has also been targeted by the Internet group Anonymous," said Hirai.

Thus justifying the internet fear and crackdown to come ...

"In addition, the personal information on Sony's top management, including the names of their children, the schools they attend, and the names of other family members, has been published on the Internet. They have also called for protests outside Sony stores around the world."

Evidently, they are scared, and want us that way too... but he reiterated...

Hirai said the company hadn't been able to find any link between Anonymous and the latest attack.

The dispersed Internet-based group had already claimed it had nothing to do with the attack.

I have a question... "Who" said that "We" did not do it?

I thought they were Anonymous.....

www.computerworld.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

As soon as I saw that credit card info was released from the attack, the idea that "anonymous" did it as faded pretty quickly. Seems more like a criminal hacker group that makes money off selling credit information.

reply to post by boncho
Sony has come back to say the information was encrypted, but it doesn't help them or any other business that uses CC transactions online. This further hurts the image that your info is safe.

As events unfold around the PlayStation Network data breach that exposed personally identifiable information for 77 million accounts, Sony has announced that it did encrypt credit card data contained within the database accessed by hackers.

But many security experts believe that wasn't nearly enough protection to fully safeguard consumer data, and that the incident is a good example of how the compliance-centric security focus endemic to the enterprise keeps a lot of information at risk.

If anything, it is a great way to promote the "more secure" form of internet where everyone has an ID card set up.Internet ID plan

The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) will be a voluntary system designed to protect consumers from online fraud and identity theft -- which hit 8.1 million people last year, at a total cost of $27 billion.

The problem: The current system of half-remembered passwords jotted down on post-it notes and based on pets and maiden names simply isn't good enough. Read more: www.foxnews.com...

I always get nervous when considering the "safety" plans of transnational corporate entities and their government meat puppets.

Hopefully, reason will prevail and we will see a different approach to personal information security... one that doesn't put it in the hands of third-parties.

I saw no correlation between anonymous recent targets and Sony.
Not sure why Sony would be a target at all in fact.

As a Sony PSN user,my opinion of Sony has actually gone up.
Why?
Because when they found out about this,they shut down the network,thus harming their own companys profit margins.
They did this do protect the customers.
They told the network users what was happening,they didn't hide it.

And whoever heard of top honchos giving a long bow live on TV to apologise to their customers?


What about seeing lehman brothers/enron bosses etc doing that?
Not a chance.

reply to post by boncho


Anonymous already tried to get CC info from people before it was released that it was stolen, claiming that they'd let you back on the PSN if you gave it to them.

Also, by the very nature of the group, anybody can belong to Anonymous. There is no member list, no records, only the not-so-anonymous people inside of it know each other. It's hard to disprove that it indeed was Anonymous, be it a person acting on their own, or with others.

Oh, and the fact that they tried to sell 2.2million credit card numbers for $100k shows that this person is very stupid and probably doesn't have a good grasp at how these things work, a newbie, if you will.

I asked sony for a refund a few months ago.. I did so because I knew something wasnt right. Im convinced it was an inside job. Whil playing cod, the game was hackd many times.. But one time in peticular caught my attention.. I witnessed an admin punch in his network id and password, where he was then able to change all the information on my screen.. From my clan name to my classes.. It was most definately an admin.. Though the only thing that makes me question if it was an admin, was the fact my screen said xbox360 infront of sony playstation network.. So perhaps its a rival attack.. Needlss to say I will be demanding my refun again and doing everyting I can to get my money and security back.

reply to post by MRedfield


Gosh, it was a joke on IRC channel. That joke happened during the PSN outage and Sony fanboys would come to our IRC channel and tell us to gave them their PSN back. So one person decided that it would be a good joke to ask for CC details and tell those fanboys that they would have their PSN back when they donated some money.

reply to post by Silcone Synapse


It's a common practice especially in Japan when a company screws up.


Bows of Apology and Thanks

Bows are a required and expected part of any apology or expression of thanks in East Asia, especially Japan, Korea, and Taiwan .
Bows of apology tend to be deeper and last longer than other types of bow. They occur with frequency during the apology, generally at about 45 degrees with the head lowered and lasting for at least the count of three, sometimes longer. The depth, frequency and duration of the bow increases with the sincerity of the apology and the severity of the offense. Bows of thanks follow the same pattern.
Bows of apology are frequently performed at press conferences by high-ranking members of a company that has performed some misdeed, such as producing faulty parts that resulted in a death. These bows are almost invariably performed standing behind a table; the tips of the fingers touch the table while the upper body, held straight, is lowered from the waist until the face is parallel with the tabletop.

reply to post by MRedfield

Also, by the very nature of the group, anybody can belong to Anonymous. There is no member list, no records, only the not-so-anonymous people inside of it know each other. It's hard to disprove that it indeed was Anonymous, be it a person acting on their own, or with others.

I guess that is just it then, isn't it?. Anonymous really isn't anything besides being people that are covered by anonymity. And so spurs the debate of exactly "what is anonymous?"



The point I was making, was that this didn't fit in with the past actions of "anonymous". While earlier actions were more about pranks and bashing Scientology.1



I posited a criminal group earlier, but another idea could be that it is corporate sabotage, when you consider the following analyst's breakdown of the event.

"It's not insignificant," said Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Sanjay Sakhrani in reference to the hack. Analysts like Sakhrani have told the media they believe Sony could be on the hook for $1.5 billion. But they're also crunching the numbers trying to figure out how much this issue will cost credit card companies like MasterCard and Visa, and it doesn't look good.

There are a few other angles that could be looked into as well.


As far as the whole "who and what is anonymous?" debate.... Just about everyone is on the internet aren't they? Except the "group" that started out as "anonymous" did act a certain way about things...

WHO CARES WHO DID IT JUST FIX IT!!!!(@ Sony)

I was pretty skeptical of the attack being the work of Anonymous from the beginning.

Sure - Anonymous has targeted Sony in the past - but it was mostly an annoyance. They tend to launch DDOS attacks as a form of protest or try to drum up other forms of protests with the internet as the medium. Those are capable of being mitigated in real-time by software/hardware setups. Downing servers designed for real-time gaming with DDOS attacks is a pretty daunting task - then just figure that it's a pretty simple attack to dispatch....

While it was possible for a few of the more resourceful (and connected) within Anonymous to launch an attack capable of bringing down PSN -globally- - it would have required an inside operative.

That, and Anonymous would have been unable to contain their enthusiasm over shutting down PSN.

Of course - the very nature of Anonymous is sketchy. People simply 'donate' their time and skill sets to a stated cause of the group, and return to what they are doing. It is certainly possible that people who also affiliate, from time to time, with "anonymous" were responsible for the attack.

It was just not an attack that had "anonymous" written on it. Stealing user account and banking information is a downright criminal offense - not a 'nuisance' or a 'prank' in the form of a protest. Why the media continued to highlight Anonymous was a mystery to me. It was just flat-out silly to suggest Anonymous had the capability to bring down PSN for over a week.

Even the network attack in question wasn't responsible for bringing the entire network down - that was done by Sony to prevent further exploitation of the system.

reply to post by Silcone Synapse


It's a common practice especially in Japan when a company screws up.


Bows of Apology and Thanks

Bows are a required and expected part of any apology or expression of thanks in East Asia, especially Japan, Korea, and Taiwan .
Bows of apology tend to be deeper and last longer than other types of bow. They occur with frequency during the apology, generally at about 45 degrees with the head lowered and lasting for at least the count of three, sometimes longer. The depth, frequency and duration of the bow increases with the sincerity of the apology and the severity of the offense. Bows of thanks follow the same pattern.
Bows of apology are frequently performed at press conferences by high-ranking members of a company that has performed some misdeed, such as producing faulty parts that resulted in a death. These bows are almost invariably performed standing behind a table; the tips of the fingers touch the table while the upper body, held straight, is lowered from the waist until the face is parallel with the tabletop.

This is something completley alien to the cut throat business models the western mega corps subscribe to.
They want profit at any cost,such is our weird way in the west.
Sony is better than that I think.
To them,this is about their honour.
Its beyond any product,its about how the folks in Sony/Japan have the ability to show real emotion and will to change when something goes wrong.

Thats why Japan and Sony have my respect.

Did Sony clear this with the FBI before releasing it?

They need more time to act on those bogus search warrants.

Anonymous is itself a proxy used for good by public hackers, and feds alike... A shared tool, one that isn't going away.

Anonymous will eventually be set up to capture individuals who have nothing to do with it... So be very careful with even the loosest affiliations.

i bet this attack was microsoft or nintendo

It's a criminal group along the lines of "shadowcrew", "darkmarket", or a "mazafaka", or by whatever name carding boards go by these days. Kevin Poulson at Wired.com has basically laid out the various groups that might be responsible and the motivation for such an attack (see PlayStation Network Hack: Who Did It?

In a nutshell, it's a carding group that wanted to steal credit card info for resale.