Sony Points the Finger at Anonymous Hacktivists

Anonymous is a collective of anonymous 'hacktivists' who have previously targeted the Church of Scientology and the servers of the Tunisian, Egyptian and Iranian governments. Back in April, the group was also threatening to attack Sony.


However, as of 8 April, the Anonymous hackers changed their stance and announced the end of all hostilities towards Sony to 'avoid collateral damage' after incurring the wrath of droves of angry gamers.

Then, on 17 April, Sony fell victim to the largest known theft of personal data from its PlayStation Network. Just two weeks earlier, this particular service had been singled out for attack by members of Anonymous, who straight away denied all responsibility for the 17 April hack. They even went as far as to condemn the attack, explaining that they're fighting to keep users' personal data safe rather than steal it ... while also seriously p**sing them off.


In fact, the attack that Anonymous had threatened to carry out on Sony was very different to the major hack the firm suffered earlier this month. Anonymous had warned it would carry out DoS (Denial of Service) attacks, aimed at bringing down Sony's servers one by one, starting with the smallest server and working up to the biggest and most difficult to fell, according to Anonymous. Denial of Service attacks are carried out by cutting a client's access to a given service, cutting access between two servers or by flooding a network with requests so as to stop it working.

The Sony hack was completely different from this kind of attack, as access was cut by Sony and not by the pirates, who were actually trying to hide the fact that they'd accessed the system and stolen data.

However, in its latest press release on the subject, Sony seems to be pointing the finger at Anonymous as suspect number one.

'We discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named Anonymous with the words We are Legion.' (a slogan that's frequently used by Anonymous).


This could actually be a great way for the real hackers to throw Sony's investigators off the scent and pin the attack on Anonymous. However, certain people are also suggesting that some members of Anonymous could have ignored the group's call for a ceasefire and attacked Sony regardless.

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