Hacker collective Anonymous has denied any involvement in the recent theft of personal information and credit card data from PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment's Station.com.
Last month, the group announced its intention to attack Sony websites in retaliation for the company's legal actions against PlayStation 3 hackers George "GeoHot" Hotz and Alexander "Graf_Chokolo" Egorenkov.
However, a few days later the group explained that it was suspending its attacks on the PlayStation Network in an effort to avoid inconveniencing users.
Yesterday, SCEA president Kaz Hirai presented evidence the hacker group Anonymous might be behind the breach in Sony servers that exposed users' personal data, explaining that "the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named 'Anonymous' with the words 'We are Legion.'"
In a press release, the group has now said it is not responsible for the PSN outage, noting, "Anonymous has never been known to have engaged in credit card theft."
"Public support is not gained by stealing credit card info and personal identities," it continued. "We are trying to fight criminal activities by corporations and governments, not steal credit cards."
The group instead pointed the finger at Sony, saying, "There is no corporation in existence [that] will choose the truth when lies are more convenient."
The statement added, "If a legitimate and honest investigation into the credit card theft is conducted, Anonymous will not be found liable. While we are a distributed and decentralized group, our 'leadership' does not condone credit card theft."
Anonymous did a great job at making themselves the #1 suspect in the PSN outage. Interesting idea to declare war on a corporation then back off just weeks before a major PSN outage.
They claim they don't involve themselves in credit card theft yet they have proven how much they care about credit card companies by taking out the Visa and Mastercard websites with denial-of-service attacks.
And when have they become concerned about public opinion? Everytime I see Anonymous in the news they have made more enemies. I mean come on, they even attacked ex-KISS member Gene Simmons.
They took the personal information of millions of PSN customers so they can break into e-mail accounts and send out phishing e-mails. These are the kinds of people Anonymous are. They will be tought a lesson when the FBI comes searching for them.
Everything Anonymous has done as a group so far has either been for "lulz" or as a matter of (occasionally misguided) principle. Acting for monetary gain doesn't jive with the things they've done previously at all. It wouldn't be very practical either, given the lack of organisation within the group.
Besides, if Anonymous did it, the leaked information would've been available on the Pirate Bay for anyone to download a long time ago.
No, they wouldn't want to be traced so they would avoid making it public. I know they used the data to send out phishing e-mails as I was attacked in that fashion. Changed my e-mail address and I'm all good.
"They claim they don't involve themselves in credit card theft yet they have proven how much they care about credit card companies by taking out the Visa and Mastercard websites with denial-of-service attacks."
What has one thing to do with the other?
"And when have they become concerned about public opinion? Everytime I see Anonymous in the news they have made more enemies. I mean come on, they even attacked ex-KISS member Gene Simmons."
The attack on the Gene Simmons websites was related to his statements, that internet downloads and filesharing of copyrighted music are responsible for the bad shape the music industry is in now. There are many people out there, who disagree with such mono causal explanations, that only blame others and these people are part of the public opinion too.
Visa and Mastercard are credit card companies. When you attack them, you show people that their customers aren't important. And considering's Anonymous' slogan of "We do not forgive. We do not forget." means they can (at any time) re-attack. I'm sure they would take credit cards if given the chance just to pook a few more holes in Visa and Mastercard.
I really don't see, what attacking the website of a credit card company has to do with stealing credit card data from customers of PSN. It's like saying the call to boycott BP because of their handling of the Gulf Oil disaster is the same as stealing gas bought at a BP station from the car of somebody.
It appears there's an internal struggle with one of their sub-groups of hackers...Unless that evidence was conjured up by SCEA in an attempt to brand Anon as nothing more than thieves...
Anon's basically not an organized group and anybody can claim they're part of it, so Anon saying or doing everything and its contrary is the default behavior. It's the very root of the joke of considering the whole of unidentified site users as a single entity that started Anon.
All these problems are probably related to Anonymous in some form. These 'group' has no 'management', so, robbers can be involved too in the first attack to PSN. Now they used the information that anon had first to take the CC numbers and everthing else.
Doesnt matter if they didnt mean to cause this, but this problem is their fault.
Exactly, It's just like the guys who release the rabid hounds into a cage full of bunnies. I wanna see those guys try to stop the dogs without getting bitten.
I hate when people call Anonymous a "group". They are nothing more than a non-unified collective. Just because one or more people said they didn't do it, doesn't mean one of their "members" didn't do it.
I think their point is: This was not a operation, if someone did it, was not using the Anonymous operator banner (even if the person DO participate in Anonymous...)
How would anyone know? Anonymous has no leadership, no hierarchy. They can't actually claim innocence because ironically, none of its members is in a position to authoritatively know what the "organization" has or hasn't been doing.
At least, that's the official line... wouldn't it be interesting if it turned out that there actually was an organized "core" of members behind most of the previous acts attributed to Anonymous? Maybe that's what the FBI et al. are hoping to find as they investigate the various illegal acts for which Anonymous has claimed credit, or been blamed.
Group as in the people within their collective who have conflicting moral beliefs on how the attacks should have been carried out. But I guess that's what they get for having zero management amongst their self-proclaimed members.
This is all conjecture anyways and above all, it's still just smoke and mirrors at this point.
Anonymous DO have some very strong moral beliefs...
They are a anti-regulation, pro-freedom (of all sorts), anarchist group (in classic anarchist theory, not the popular use of the word...)
Of course, individual members may deviate around, but these are their obvious core beliefs.
To them, Sony was restricting free speech in GeoHot case (main reason why they "helped" GeoHot), and as secondary thing, they perceive Sony removal of OtherOS as infringing people rights.
The reason they won't steal credit cards (as least not as a group, and not on purpose), is that it would be counter-productive to their goals.
Of course, sometimes they DO pull some overboard pranks, but I doubt they would consider credit card stealing a prank for the lulz.
Which is why I'm leaning more towards the idea that this so-called evidence SCEA found was fabricated by them...unless there was some sort of internal struggle to take down sony during the attacks. I'm almost inclined to believe that a black hat hacker decided to jump in and steal as much as they could while anon was preparing for battle and to make it look as though they did it...
But like I said, this is all just conjecture and I doubt we'll ever know who truly did it.
The evidence doesn't have to be fabricated by SCEA. It's probable whoever stole the stuff just left the message to pin it on anon, and not necessarily out of malice, anon's prominent enough that many enjoy pretending they're notable parts of the collective. Even anonops is just some guys pretending they're somehow representative of anon as a whole.
@Riedo: It's far more probable whoever stole the stuff didn't intentionally leave any tracks what so ever. Unless he is the dumbest script kiddie ever to discover the internet. ;)
If the note is real, I doubt it is related to the actual credit-card theft.
Someone from anonymous may or may not be behind it, but "distributed and decentralized group" and fully accountable just don't go well together.
Edit: I'll go a step further, I think the part of the idea behind the way they are organized is that they wouldn't be fully accountable. Unfortunately for them, that works both ways.
I love how most people on here act like they know Anon.
Andrew is the only person who has shown that he knows how they operate. There is a hierarchy, without it being a true hierarchy. It's the "perceived leader" thing.
I wish people would stop calling these guyz/galz Hackers.....they are what true-programmers call Crackers. In either point in case this is the oldest tactic of espionage....go in do something, leave your enemies calling card and exit stage left.
Guess these coporate execu-tards didnt think to spend money on security features until now eh?
Guess the $1M (or comprable denomination) investment in more stoute firewall's (soft/hardware) is looking pretty cheap.
Can's see what legitimate hacking group would be interested in CC information as that is chump information for newbies and slimers. Let the physical thiefs handle that crap, real Crackers take the money from corp/govt institutions through accounting transactions anyways. Who ever did this, did this against the Japanese and American players for some attempt at a leverage move.
This leads me to the question, are their false-programmers too? And how can I see if my program was coded by a true-programmer and most important, are programs by false-programers not as good or can they even harm my computer?
Ok, first, all the morality line is a load of garbage anyway. Morality is not objective, it is subjective. Do not criminalize someone that does not share your morality. Yours is every bit as bad as theirs.
Secondly, I would challenge any person here with the competence to post on this forum, to right click on their desktop, create a new text file, name it anonymous, open it, and type "We are Legion". Congratulations, you have just created all the evidence that Sony has linking their hacks to Anonymous. IF the hacker who did this watched the news, or paid attention to Sony, which you must assume that he did prior to attacking them, he would also know about their conflict with Anon. Do you really think someone intelligent enough to hack into Sony, steal all their data, and then get out again without being detected, would leave their calling card(Particularly when they already have their faces plastered all over youtube and the like)
Where is the information regarding the date and time that file was created. Can they even proved that hack was linked with the personal information hack. And lastly, where is the REAL data that proves something. Security logs, network logs, etc.
Isnt wrote in the bible that "thou shall never let your left hand know what your right hand does" ?. i think that , in any case , this quote applies to both SCEA and Anonymous.
They claim they don't involve themselves in credit card theft yet they have proven how much they care about credit card companies by taking out the Visa and Mastercard websites with denial-of-service attacks.
And when have they become concerned about public opinion? Everytime I see Anonymous in the news they have made more enemies. I mean come on, they even attacked ex-KISS member Gene Simmons.
They took the personal information of millions of PSN customers so they can break into e-mail accounts and send out phishing e-mails. These are the kinds of people Anonymous are. They will be tought a lesson when the FBI comes searching for them.
Besides, if Anonymous did it, the leaked information would've been available on the Pirate Bay for anyone to download a long time ago.
What has one thing to do with the other?
"And when have they become concerned about public opinion? Everytime I see Anonymous in the news they have made more enemies. I mean come on, they even attacked ex-KISS member Gene Simmons."
The attack on the Gene Simmons websites was related to his statements, that internet downloads and filesharing of copyrighted music are responsible for the bad shape the music industry is in now. There are many people out there, who disagree with such mono causal explanations, that only blame others and these people are part of the public opinion too.
Visa and Mastercard are credit card companies. When you attack them, you show people that their customers aren't important. And considering's Anonymous' slogan of "We do not forgive. We do not forget." means they can (at any time) re-attack. I'm sure they would take credit cards if given the chance just to pook a few more holes in Visa and Mastercard.
Jumping to conclusions a little early, aren't we?
Anonymous is pro-individual privacy. Stealing the info if 70+ million people isn't their MO.
Doesnt matter if they didnt mean to cause this, but this problem is their fault.
At least, that's the official line... wouldn't it be interesting if it turned out that there actually was an organized "core" of members behind most of the previous acts attributed to Anonymous? Maybe that's what the FBI et al. are hoping to find as they investigate the various illegal acts for which Anonymous has claimed credit, or been blamed.
This is all conjecture anyways and above all, it's still just smoke and mirrors at this point.
They are a anti-regulation, pro-freedom (of all sorts), anarchist group (in classic anarchist theory, not the popular use of the word...)
Of course, individual members may deviate around, but these are their obvious core beliefs.
To them, Sony was restricting free speech in GeoHot case (main reason why they "helped" GeoHot), and as secondary thing, they perceive Sony removal of OtherOS as infringing people rights.
The reason they won't steal credit cards (as least not as a group, and not on purpose), is that it would be counter-productive to their goals.
Of course, sometimes they DO pull some overboard pranks, but I doubt they would consider credit card stealing a prank for the lulz.
But like I said, this is all just conjecture and I doubt we'll ever know who truly did it.
If the note is real, I doubt it is related to the actual credit-card theft.
Edit: I'll go a step further, I think the part of the idea behind the way they are organized is that they wouldn't be fully accountable. Unfortunately for them, that works both ways.
@Andrew= Completely true. Thanks for enlightenment.
Andrew is the only person who has shown that he knows how they operate. There is a hierarchy, without it being a true hierarchy. It's the "perceived leader" thing.
Guess these coporate execu-tards didnt think to spend money on security features until now eh?
Guess the $1M (or comprable denomination) investment in more stoute firewall's (soft/hardware) is looking pretty cheap.
Can's see what legitimate hacking group would be interested in CC information as that is chump information for newbies and slimers. Let the physical thiefs handle that crap, real Crackers take the money from corp/govt institutions through accounting transactions anyways. Who ever did this, did this against the Japanese and American players for some attempt at a leverage move.
This leads me to the question, are their false-programmers too? And how can I see if my program was coded by a true-programmer and most important, are programs by false-programers not as good or can they even harm my computer?
Secondly, I would challenge any person here with the competence to post on this forum, to right click on their desktop, create a new text file, name it anonymous, open it, and type "We are Legion". Congratulations, you have just created all the evidence that Sony has linking their hacks to Anonymous. IF the hacker who did this watched the news, or paid attention to Sony, which you must assume that he did prior to attacking them, he would also know about their conflict with Anon. Do you really think someone intelligent enough to hack into Sony, steal all their data, and then get out again without being detected, would leave their calling card(Particularly when they already have their faces plastered all over youtube and the like)
Where is the information regarding the date and time that file was created. Can they even proved that hack was linked with the personal information hack. And lastly, where is the REAL data that proves something. Security logs, network logs, etc.
Don't be a sucker.