Sony has blamed the online group anonymous for the crash in its network. Anonymous has famously been responsible for defending free speech across the internet. They most recently ran campaigns against companies for withdrawing support from the site Wikileaks.
Sony reported that it had found a file on one of it servers. They claim the file was named anonymous and read, ‘we are legion’.
The group Anonymous had denied any involvement in the data theft. It is thought Anonymous sympathised with three hackers whom Sony sued, this was supposedly the motivation for the attack. The hackers were sued after they successfully found a way to play pirated software on the ps3.
Sony argues that a denial of service attack (which overloads the targets servers with traffic) was undertaken by Anonymous. They claim this caused a distraction allowing the hack.
The explanation is unlikely to impress the millions of gamers who are still unable to play on the PSN network, or the many more millions on Sony Online Entertainment (Which was also taken offline 2 days ago).
Anonymous have strongly denied any involvement in the attack. They argue they would have nothing to gain from attacking a network used by many of their sympathisers.
Experts had previously suggested it was unlikely Anonymous were involved. The majority opinion remains that this action was by major criminals. Sony said today themselves that this was a, ‘highly sophisticated and very professional attack’.
Is blaming Anonymous almost two weeks after the attack (with the network still offline) an increasingly desperate action? Even if Anonymous’ s attack was a distraction it is no excuse for the lack of proper security. Regulators say customer data should have been encrypted. Sony now faces a major fine from the UK information commissioner’s office for failing to secure customer information.
Now the New York attorney general has subpoenaed Sony. The states top law official wants to know more about how hackers were able to access people’s data.
Sony is offering 30 days of PlayStation plus (the paid version of the PlayStation network) to customers as a means of compensation. Users can try out demos, get the latest game upgrades and betas. There will also be a forced Firmware upgrade. This will help patch up the hack and offer increased protection when the network goes back online.