Anonymous Denies Sony Claims of Disruption, Credit Info Theft

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday, in a letter to Congress, Sony detailed the steps they were taking to resolve the issues that have been plaguing them since the PlayStation Network and SOE online components were hacked, claiming to have found evidence linking the crime to Anonymous. Now, Anonymous has responded."

No they havent

[OverlordQ]

Now, Anonymous has responded.

No, one person has responded. As has been touted many many many times by people on Slashdot whenever news organizations do it, there is no central authority, there is no registered list. So yes, while that clique may not have done it, does not mean another clique didn't.

Deflection

[Trip6]

Blame your own incompetence on a well known public entity. A trick as old as the hills.

Re:Derp

[Anonymous Coward]

$ echo "We are legion" > Anonymous.txt

Should I call the FBI now and get them to investigate an "intrusion perpetrated by Anonymous"?

Seriously, if you think a text file left behind is proof of anything, I hope you never get called into jury duty.

No Plausible Deniability

[bluemonq]

I was under the impression that *anyone* can be Anonymous. If that's the case, Anonymous can't prove that Anonymous didn't do it.

WHO responded?

[melikamp]

If the response was anonymous, how do we know that the people who responded were the same as those who DDOSed? This, in a nutshell, is the idiocy of treating Anonymous as a group of people, however loosely organized. It would be better to call them what they are in this particular instance: Sony customers who are really pissed off.

Re:Derp

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but it can't be discredited either. Are you saying we should just take Anonymous at their word simply because they deny it? I'm not saying Sony's response or initial security wasn't pathetic, because it was, fact still remains it was *probably* Anonymous, especially when looking at the timeline of events.

Yes, you should take them at their word. Pretty sure that is the basis of innocent until proven guilty.

Re:No they havent

[Legal.Troll]

This is a rather predictable consequence of forming a "group" based on anonymity and total absence of central authority. Anyone who claims to be Anonymous is Anonymous. Anyone who says "Anonymous" did something is lying if and only if the thing was NOT ACTUALLY DONE. Wonderful message-spreading platform you've got for yourself, kids.

Re:Deflection

[shish]

And made all the easier by Anonymous' nature -- it only takes one member (or one mole) to say "we did it", and even if all the others say "we didn't", the media can still point at that first voice as an authoritative one...

Re:No Plausible Deniability

[The Dawn Of Time]

Who says those people make the rules? How does one impose order on an anarchist organization?

Re:No Plausible Deniability

[exentropy]

Innocent until proven guilty.

Re:No they havent

[mug funky]

i'd contend that if nobody shared their intention with others, then there was no acting as a group.

even if "the leader of anonymous" performed this data grab, if they didn't tell anybody there's no way you can say "anonymous did it".

so IRC chat logs, postings on anonops or whatever they call it, etc. it's a trivial matter to look this stuff up if you want to find it.

if there's no sign of these places discussing hacking into PSN and stealing member's details, you can be pretty sure that Anonymous didn't do it.

i believe they've actually stated early on that their DDoS was hurting PSN users, and they didn't want that - they wanted to hurt Sony, but not gamers. so they changed their strategy (or at least, issued a statement saying "if you're DDoSing PSN, plz stop lol kthxbai", which is as much authority as anon can have over its own members).

of course, some internet tough guy might have got in during the anon attacks, who identified as anonymous, and decided to take it upon him/herself to steal shit and leave a calling card on behalf of his group. remember there's a lot of misfits out there.

Re:No they havent

[schnell]

they've still done a lot of good work bringing to light corruption and lies our governments feed us.

I thought this was about Anonymous, not Wikileaks. Anonymous in particular and 4chan in general has not brought to light anything I'm aware of except tentactle porn torrents.

Or have all Slashbot favorite entities merged into one? We can call it GNU WikiBuntuDroidNonymous. Like "Muad'dib" becoming a killing word, its very name will become a nerd totem of +5 Righteousness and +20 Defense Against Potential Girlfriends.

Re:No they havent

[PopeRatzo]

If they did any good it was purely a side effect that occurred while they were getting their lulz.

Which makes the good they do that much sweeter.

Noble intent is fleeting and often unreliable as a motivation. Lulz are forever.

Re:Derp

[JWSmythe]

You know, I was tracking defacement attacks for a while. For the ones I investigated, I found that the "evidence" they left behind rarely if ever really corresponded to the actual hacker. I saw so many "Chinese" and "Russian" defacement, that could be easily traced to kids in the US, especially during school vacations.

    Hell, if I just broke into Sony's network, stole a metric fuck-ton of passwords and credit card credentials, I'd sure as hell leave behind some "evidence" that pointed towards someone else. What'd they expect? "Hi, I just broke into your server. My name is JW Smythe. My address is 14 Hacker Way, New York, NY, 10011. Come by and visit me any time. I'll be buying Internet porn with all these stolen cards, so knock before you come in."

Re:No they havent

[Nethemas the Great]

I beg to differ, a stupid victim is in part responsible and so do in a manner of speaking by your statement about Sony failing to apply due diligence. Which of course they hadn't. Researchers months prior discovered that they not only did not have a firewall, but also, unpatched server software. These researchers notified Sony [time.com] of this vulnerability but Sony ignored them.