Sony finds "proof" Anon was involved in PSN hack
- Thread starter StriderShinryu
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There could be a resonably limited number of suspects. How many people do you know just off the top of your head who have the skill to pull something like this off? The oldest crime-solving adage in the book is to find out who has the means and the motive.distended said:
That said, given that Anonymous has said they 'fight corruption' or some such self-righteous crap, and from what I've read it seems like sony were pulling a lot of fast ones on their subscribers, that means Anonymous could well have done it
Hmm, and a professional wouldn't leave a note to cover their tracks. Not at all.
As I've said - this has all the hallmarks of organised crime and none of typical Anon behaviour - unless there has been a whole lot of "Our cock is Legion and bigger than Sony's!" going up all over the place.
As I've said - this has all the hallmarks of organised crime and none of typical Anon behaviour - unless there has been a whole lot of "Our cock is Legion and bigger than Sony's!" going up all over the place.
You do realize that Anonymous isn't just a witty name for a supposed organization, it's an adjective that actually applies to all of its supposed members? Meaning, knowing that it was Anonymous that was responsible helps absolutely no one trying to identify the hacker(s).Lesd3vil said:
And as a computer engineer, I've probably worked with tens upon tens of people with the skill required to do this. And that's just in one person's little corner of the world.
To be perfectly honest, I don't see that this is incriminating at all. No group is stupid enough to leave their identification when they commit such a large scale crime.
Besides which, Anon fancies itself a group of hackers with a political agenda, not a criminal one. This definitely seems like a set-up to me; the hacker using Anon's history with Sony as a way of covering his/her/their tracks.
Besides which, Anon fancies itself a group of hackers with a political agenda, not a criminal one. This definitely seems like a set-up to me; the hacker using Anon's history with Sony as a way of covering his/her/their tracks.
Given that Anonymus is mostly a very immature group of people i don't believe it's them. They wouldn't have been able to keep their mouth shut for so long, most of the time they even sabotage themselves.
It's easy however to blame a faceless group for something. Sony should concentrate less on blaming such a wide group of people and more on actually fixing their network.
It's easy however to blame a faceless group for something. Sony should concentrate less on blaming such a wide group of people and more on actually fixing their network.
The thread title is very misleading and again, is causing lots of people to yet again have a go at Sony, claiming its a conspiracy.
Here are the actual facts: Sony told the US Congress everything they knew in regards to the intrusion. Among these things were the file labelled anonymous.
At no point has Sony tried to claim this is "proof" that anonymous was involved - thats just the thread title trying to stir things up again.
As I've stated in other threads, the idea that this is a massive conspiracy is completely stupid.
Even more stupid would be to think that Sony would continue this conspiracy, risking their entire business, by lying to US Congress. They simply told them everything they knew.
All anyone knows is whoever hacked PSN, left the file deliberately, whether they are part of anonymous or not.
I hope people read this post before stating that:
Sony is stupid for claiming the file is proof - it could easily be a fake! Sony sucks!!!
The thread title is wrong, at no point did they claim the file was proof.
Here are the actual facts: Sony told the US Congress everything they knew in regards to the intrusion. Among these things were the file labelled anonymous.
At no point has Sony tried to claim this is "proof" that anonymous was involved - thats just the thread title trying to stir things up again.
As I've stated in other threads, the idea that this is a massive conspiracy is completely stupid.
Even more stupid would be to think that Sony would continue this conspiracy, risking their entire business, by lying to US Congress. They simply told them everything they knew.
All anyone knows is whoever hacked PSN, left the file deliberately, whether they are part of anonymous or not.
I hope people read this post before stating that:
Sony is stupid for claiming the file is proof - it could easily be a fake! Sony sucks!!!
The thread title is wrong, at no point did they claim the file was proof.
Anon is in this for the lulz. That's all they care about. Stealing credit card info is so far beyond their MO as be ludicrous. That said, could very well still be Anonymous, if just because it's an anonymous hacker.
People have a hard time grasping that.
People have a hard time grasping that.
Umm.. how exactly is the title misleading? Sony, in their search for the cause of the hack, found something that could incriminate Anon but is in truth rather dubious, hence why it was described as "proof" (note the quotation marks) and not directly stated as being Proof. In this case, the use of quotation marks indicates both ironic usage of the enclosed word as well as intended misuse of the word.ChrisSmith24 said:
Yeah, I get what you mean, the quotation marks do imply that the proof is not 100% accurate. Also, you are right that the title could mean exactly what you described, but some people are not reading the article and taking the thread title as fact, not realising what your intended message was.
Sorry if I seemed angry, I was just annoyed at how people were missing the point.
My point was that Sony was just revealing what they know, and while as you say, the file could incriminate Anon - they weren't accusing them or actually stating that it was proof.
Because of this people are missing the point of the thread title and are wrongfully assuming Sony is claiming that the file is proof, and are then having a go at Sony for it.
To be fair this isn't really your fault, as I now understand that your title could be 100% accurate. But in my defence, I still think it is a bit misleading as it turns out I was mislead by it - thinking you were claiming Sony was blaming Anon because of the file they found, and using the file as proof.
Sorry if I seemed angry, I was just annoyed at how people were missing the point.
My point was that Sony was just revealing what they know, and while as you say, the file could incriminate Anon - they weren't accusing them or actually stating that it was proof.
Because of this people are missing the point of the thread title and are wrongfully assuming Sony is claiming that the file is proof, and are then having a go at Sony for it.
To be fair this isn't really your fault, as I now understand that your title could be 100% accurate. But in my defence, I still think it is a bit misleading as it turns out I was mislead by it - thinking you were claiming Sony was blaming Anon because of the file they found, and using the file as proof.
I cant help but feel like i have seen this before.... to be totally honest it reminds me of the Laughing Man from Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex series... A group of copy cats using a well known hacker alias to commit cyber terrorism to help hide in the ambiguity of the internet, all the while sending authorities to look for a singular person that may or may not have existed... Provided their seems to be no political or economical end game so perhaps anon is the Joker of the Laughing Man, to not totally rip the idea off they just want to see the world burn.
Or perhaps it's my total detached feelings about the whole thing, seeing as paying any sort of attention to it will most likely make it worse, so I choose to make reference to how their just ripping off some idea i saw watching Anime.
Or perhaps it's my total detached feelings about the whole thing, seeing as paying any sort of attention to it will most likely make it worse, so I choose to make reference to how their just ripping off some idea i saw watching Anime.
Except for the face that Anonymous is a faceless group of many individuals. That's like leaving an e-mail saying "It was me -some black guy." It'd be hard to do anything to the group and nearly impossible to pick out the individual.
Anon is not even an organization. Anon is basically every person on the internet. "Anon" as a group is the name given when certain people from across the internets decide to gang up and fight a common enemy. Still, I don't believe anon did it. This was quite obvious an attack meant to steal data and sell it. They used the recent anon "controversy" as a way to cover up their tracks.
When the people of the internets group up and form "anon" they usually form a political activist group that supports the free sharing of information. Why would they hack Sony's databases and steal all of this data? What was the point? Such an attack would only put the "organization" in a bad light.
Sony seems to be doing the same thing. They're blaming anon because it's convenient for them. Sony is in a bad light and by shifting the attention on anon they're hoping the spotlight would turn to them instead of focusing on Sony's incompetence.
When the people of the internets group up and form "anon" they usually form a political activist group that supports the free sharing of information. Why would they hack Sony's databases and steal all of this data? What was the point? Such an attack would only put the "organization" in a bad light.
Sony seems to be doing the same thing. They're blaming anon because it's convenient for them. Sony is in a bad light and by shifting the attention on anon they're hoping the spotlight would turn to them instead of focusing on Sony's incompetence.
I still think that the letter is a red herring. Anonymous has already stated that they did not do it.
Perhaps it is quite simply an Anonymous person like anyone else.
Perhaps it is quite simply an Anonymous person like anyone else.
You missed the part where Sony outsourced a variety of independent network security firms to assist them in their investigation of the attack. Due to this being a criminal attack, they also have to share any relevant details to Congress, up to, and including, mentioning the presence of this file.ryo02 said:
If Sony were fabricating something like that, it would:
A) Get them nowhere. Most already think Anonymous had something to do with it, anyway, and even still, the attack happened in the shadow of Anonymous' DoS attack, anyway. Either way, Anonymous is sort of in a "guilty-by-association" place, at the moment, and Sony didn't actually blame them for anything. They stated that they found this file littered about in a couple servers, and that the attack took place when their devs were dealing with the DoS attack.
B) Get them in a metric -ton of trouble, for lying to Congress and trying to implicate someone in a criminal investigation without any corroborating evidence. You see the shit storm they're stuck in? I sincerely doubt they want MORE trouble. Never mind that lying to Congress while they, the FBI and several network security firms are trying to help them catch the hackers would crush their business. Financially wouldn't even be an issue. They would get shut down.
Reporters are just like average people. They like to read/hear half of a story, then spout gibberish.Jonsbax said:
We don't know that the hacker is selling credit card information. Remember, while they have 77 million user profiles, only about a third of those have credit cards attached, and that includes active and expired ones, so there's no real way to know what kind of yield that'd provide. With those numbers, that's a very poor ratio. If they were in it for the money, XBox Live would have been a much better target.AdumbroDeus said:
In any case -- while this isn't by any means me trying to play the blame game -- this also begs the possibility that it could have been Anonymous, and they were looking for dev personal info in the cluster of information they were rooting through. It's also plausible because while Anonymous denied this particular attack, they denied it when it was announced, which was a few days later, once Sony had some facts in order. It could well have been them, and they simply denied it after the fact because of the damage it had done to all facets of the equation, specifically, end-users.
That being said, anyone with a credit card affixed to their account has most likely by now taken steps to get a new card number, and a hacker with access to your name is hardly a worry. There's very few people in the world who aren't part of one social site or another (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc), so that's already readily available intel.
I personally don't think this was Anonymous, though. I think their DoS attack was a gateway, but it's already been said: Prompting something this illegal would cause pretty much the majority of them to jump-ship and not want any part in it. An attack like this, against multiple branches of Sony (and apparently a branch of Amazon and a couple other places), is, in all honesty, way out of Anonymous' league. Barring that, Sony has stated multiple times that they themselves think it's a plant, and they've distinctly outlined to both their customers and Congress that the hackers responsible for the attack took great, elaborate steps to hide their bread crumbs. Leaving out something so glaringly obvious...it just doesn't fit. I know Anonymous likes to brag about what they do, and in any other case, I might even be inclined to think that that was their form of being a braggart. In this case, though, it's doubtful. It's way too elaborate for what they like to do, far beyond the lines they're willing to cross, and their statement about DDoS attacks on Sony's networks being the wrong way to protest the company because of how it affects the users.