Hacker collective Anonymous says it has suspended its attacks on the PlayStation Network in an effort to avoid inconveniencing users, though it intends to continue its assault on Sony through other methods.
The group proclaimed its intentions earlier this week to punish Sony Computer Entertainment America for filing lawsuits against PS3 hackers George "GeoHot" Hotz and Alexander "Graf_Chokolo" Egorenkov, and for allegedly preventing consumers from using Sony products in the manner of their choosing (e.g. circumventing security measures and running unauthorized code on PS3s).
Anonymous then launched denial-of-service attacks against the company's sites, forums, and even PSN. The group announced a change in its strategy today: "Anonymous is not attacking the PSN at this time. We realize that targeting the PSN is not a good idea. We have therefore temporarily suspended our action, until a method is found that will not severely impact Sony customers."
Responded to the attacks in a statement yesterday, Sony said "We are currently investigating, including the possibility of targeted behavior of an outside party. If this is indeed caused by such an act, we want to once again thank our customers who have borne the brunt of the attack through interrupted service. Our engineers are working to restore and maintain the services."
"This attack is aimed solely at Sony," Anonymous adds, "and we will try our best to not affect the gamers, as this would defeat the purpose of our actions. If we did inconvenience users, please know that this was not our goal. ... That being said, our campaign against Sony and others that would trample on the idea of free information will continue, until we are satisfied with the outcome."
The hackers, who are operating under a unit called OpSony, though, warn that other segments of Anonymous, such as SonyRecon, could have differing beliefs and continue separate attacks due to the group's unstructured nature -- as evidenced by one member nicknamed Takai calling inconvenienced PSN users "collateral damage" yesterday.
What is the purpose of hacking a network like PSN if not to disrupt the service? Isn't that the best way to make your point - by actually inconveniencing Sony and its customers?
They're not hacking, they're sending DDoS attacks, effectively preventing gamers from playing certain aspects of games via the PSN. I suppose the original intent was to disrupt PSN commerce transactions, but it ended up just pissing off a lot of gamers.
Well that was my point. Why disrupt a service like PSN if you're going to try to tip-toe around the people actually using the network? If those people can't tell anything is happening, then you're not going to make much of an impact with your disruption.
I think that's exactly what Anonymous is trying to avoid -- the gamer demographic is precisely the same people who support them, so pissing off the wrong people will dramatically undermine their own constituency. That said, I'm glad there are some among them who are willing to move away from blindly attacking aspects of a company that have nothing to do with one another. It helps deflate the "script kiddie" image that's so prevalent among their detractors.
I wouldnt say the gamer demographic is the same people who support them. Im a gamer and i hate what they are doing. The guy sony is taking a guy to court for breaking the terms of service and opening up a ps3 and practically reverse engineering parts of it so he can play boot leg games. SOny has every right to do that.
I think it is up to us gamers to express our concerns with Sony as well. Not just hack them and hurting gamers that have nothing to do with the situation. The problem going on with right now with this situation there is no spokesperson for either side right now. For one, Anonymous has to remain one "Anonymous" so there can be no way for them to communicate their concerns to the general public as to this situation. There needs to be some kind of organization to what is going on here.
Even though who ever steps forward to bat for Sony is going to be burned bad. And anyone who steps up to represent Anonymous is going to get black listed by Sony. But those sacrafices need to be made by both sides to end this fued. Both sides have made mistakes time to man up and take the shots you need to take
The main thing one should not forget about Anonymous, and that's true for Martin's question too, is that it's not in fact an organized group, it's a circumstantial, ever-changing collection of random people who happen to read the same message boards and will jump on a common bandwagon when it seems amusing or empowering.
So there isn't necessarily any coordination beyond the post that sparks the latest fad or prank, the anons doing it aren't necessarily the same anons than the ones who were attacking the credit card companies and thus have different interests, and any spokesperson or apparent organization like anonnews that emerges is merely a subset of that group trying to make sense out of it, to pull a prank, to use the attack to further their own point of view, or to feel empowered themselves.
In fact, anon's most ordered intervention, against the CoS, was only that way because an external anti-CoS activist wrote on one of their boards after they'd started random hacking and managed to gain their interest long enough to make them show up in protests (because his beard was to them an interesting gimmick, more or less).
So the answer to your question can be "it's not the same guys attacking", "they're gamers more than they're credit card users", "they stopped because they got bored and one guy's trying to spin that in a positive light" (the most probable in my opinion), etc.
"... That being said, our campaign against Sony and others that would trample on the idea of free GAMES will continue, until we are satisfied with the outcome."
In this business, information = data = games. How many people out there using these PS3 hacks brougth to light by GeoHot would honestly be using it for hobbyist purposes? Circumventing game system software or hardware in a way which allows playing pirated games is illegal for a reason, guys. The fact that they consider PSN users 'collateral damage' just goes to show these assholes aren't about freedom of expression. This kind of attack is about as effective as your common terrorist trying to save the world by bombing a bus full of innocent civilians.
They are changing their tactic so that it actually targets the people they intend to inconvenience.
Now, an article over at Ars sheds some light on other things they've been up to, which are a lot less bothersome to PSN. That makes more sense to me.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/anonymous-goes-after- sony-makes-
it-personal-very-personal.ars
Even though who ever steps forward to bat for Sony is going to be burned bad. And anyone who steps up to represent Anonymous is going to get black listed by Sony. But those sacrafices need to be made by both sides to end this fued. Both sides have made mistakes time to man up and take the shots you need to take
So there isn't necessarily any coordination beyond the post that sparks the latest fad or prank, the anons doing it aren't necessarily the same anons than the ones who were attacking the credit card companies and thus have different interests, and any spokesperson or apparent organization like anonnews that emerges is merely a subset of that group trying to make sense out of it, to pull a prank, to use the attack to further their own point of view, or to feel empowered themselves.
In fact, anon's most ordered intervention, against the CoS, was only that way because an external anti-CoS activist wrote on one of their boards after they'd started random hacking and managed to gain their interest long enough to make them show up in protests (because his beard was to them an interesting gimmick, more or less).
So the answer to your question can be "it's not the same guys attacking", "they're gamers more than they're credit card users", "they stopped because they got bored and one guy's trying to spin that in a positive light" (the most probable in my opinion), etc.
In this business, information = data = games. How many people out there using these PS3 hacks brougth to light by GeoHot would honestly be using it for hobbyist purposes? Circumventing game system software or hardware in a way which allows playing pirated games is illegal for a reason, guys. The fact that they consider PSN users 'collateral damage' just goes to show these assholes aren't about freedom of expression. This kind of attack is about as effective as your common terrorist trying to save the world by bombing a bus full of innocent civilians.