Anonymous Hacker Wages War on Sony

The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous!

An infamous group of anonymous computer hackers known as, simply put, “Anonymous,” have waged a free speech war against electronics giant, Sony.

The group, who often protest in Guy Fawkes’ masks a la “V for Vendetta,” announced to the world their plans to take down Sony, citing that the company’s legal actions regarding hacker GeoHot "have been deemed an unforgivable offense against free speech and Internet.”

While the vendetta doesn’t seem quite virtuous, it certainly was voracious. The malicious attacks struck Sony’s websites, PlayStation.com and Sony.com, causing the sites to load slowly or not at all. Reports have been rolling in from various video game sites that Sony's PlayStation Network for the PlayStation 3 is experiencing outages and lag as well.

Sony had sued hacker GeoHot (George Hotz) for allegedly violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and for allegedly contributing to copyright infringement. Hotz, a 21-year New Jersey security researcher, is famous for jailbreaking the first iPhone (News - Alert) at the age of 17. Hotz was recently ordered by a San Francisco judge to turn over his computer equipment as part of Sony’s legal effort and submit his PayPal (News - Alert) records for evidence that he’d received donations in response to PS3 jailbreak publication. Sony’s recent court win also allowed the company to collect the IP addresses of any user who had visited GeoHot’s site.

Responding to this, Anonymous wrote:

You have abused the judicial system in an attempt to censor information about how your products work. You have victimized your own customers merely for possessing and sharing information, and continue to target those who seek this information. In doing so you have violated the privacy of thousands of innocent people who only sought the free distribution of information. 

There has also been a rather ominous video from Anonymous uploaded onto YouTube, detailing their plans.

“We are Anonymous. We are a legion. We do not forgive greedy companies,” the video closes.

What Anonymous fails to realize is that by attacking Sony to vindicate the vigilant, they’re attacking every innocent person on the PlayStation networks which, when you think about it, seems counter productive, as it will only make gamers less sympathetic to their argument. 

As of today, Anonymous went a step further and has found and started publishing personal information on Sony executives. In a rather immature move, forums with the published info suggest crank calling the executives on Skype (News - Alert) and place Craigslist erotic personals in their name. Because nothing says war like a good crank call.

Sony.com and Playstation.com are back online. While this whole scenario has been a sort of rumpus for Sony, it’s rather hard to condone Anonymous’s “virtuous” tactics.