Powered by Blogger.

Anonymous 'may have been behind Sony PlayStation Network hack'


Sony PlayStation 3


Members of Anonymous may have been behind the cyberattack onSony's PlayStation Network and Online Entertainment systems despite a denial issued this week, according to reports.
Meanwhile, the group is believed to be considering another attack against Sony's systems this weekend, just as the Japanese giant had hoped to return them to operation after being offline for more than a week.
Two journalists at The Financial Times report that "veterans" of the group have told them that one or more of the group's supporters may have gone beyond the rest and broken into the company's servers in April, rather than simply carrying out a cyberattack that would knock them offline.
Sony claimed in a letter to the US Congress that private investigators called in to find the cause of the cyber-theft, in which personal details and possibly credit card details of between 77m and 100m people using the global networks were stolen, had found a file with the name "Anonymous" and part of its slogan stored on a server that was attacked.
Some members of Anonymous issued an angry denial on Thursday in which they said that no investigation would find the group to have been involved in the thefts, although they agreed that Sony's systems had been targeted – in an operation they dubbed "OpSony" – for a "denial of service" attack that would cripple it.
But the denial stopped short of saying that Anonymous members had in fact broken into Sony's systems and left the file there.
Some members of Anonymous are skilled hackers who might have been able to break into Sony's systems and steal the data. What is unclear is whether they would do it for personal gain or to prove that they could.
Anonymous representatives continued to insist that the break-in was not their purpose or responsibility. "Let's be clear, we are legion, but it wasn't us. You are incompetent, Sony," it tweeted on one of the semi-official Anonymous accounts on Twitter on Thursday.
Now the FT says that Anonymous members had been discussing details of a vulnerability that would enable a break-in to the systems in a chatroom ahead of the beginning of OpSony in April. "The hacker that did this was supporting OpSony's movements," the FT quotes the activist saying.
Anonymous is reportedly considering another attack on Sony this weekend in retaliation for the company's handling – and particularly its accusations against the group – of the PSN and SOE breaches.
The hackers involved told CNet they have access to some of Sony's servers and that they will publicise any information they can glean from it. That might include internal company details – as happened when Anonymous targeted the website of UK law firm ACS:Law and US security company HBGary – or perhaps the credit card details held on the Sony site.
Anonymous originally targeted Sony over its legal pursuit of George Hotz, who had discovered a "root key" that would allow anyone to run pirated software on the company's PlayStation 3 consoles.

0 comments:

Post a Comment