Anonymous Hacker Group Targets Sony

Sony has found itself embroiled in somewhat of a cyberwar this week, as members of the shadowy online hacker group 'Anonymous' have pledged to punish the company for its legal action against two other hackers accused of enabling piracy on Sony's video game consoles. One of those malfeasants goes by the name ofGeoHot, who some readers will remember as the fellow who enabled custom firmware on the PS3 to get around the forced removal of Linux functionality from the machine. Anonymous is well known for its recent hacktivist campaigns against groups like the Church of Scientology and Paypal, the former for attempting to censor YouTube and the latter for blocking online donations from reaching Wikileaks.

The Anonymous hacker group earlier this week released an open letter on the web, which explained the source of their latest distaste for Sony:

"You have abused the judicial system in an attempt to censor information on how your products work. You have victimised your own customers merely for possessing and sharing information, and continue to target every person who seeks this information. In doing so you have violated the privacy of thousands," the letter read. "Now you will experience the wrath of Anonymous."

What do hackers do when they get like, really angry? Let's say it all together now:distributed denial of service attack. This time, the target has been Sony's Playstation Network (PSN) service.

According to reports, the attack by Anonymous (dubbed operation payback) was moderately successful. On Monday, some portions of the PSN service were taken down, which prompted Sony to issue the statement that they were investigating claims of "intermittent service" from customers. The attack lasted most of Monday, April 4th and ended early on Tuesday morning. During the attack, Sony's PlayStation Store was offline for many users in North America. Other related domains were also affected by the cyberattack.

It is likely that these activities will further drive a wedge between different portions of Sony's fanbase: those who believe that they should be able to do whatever they want with their hardware, including the use of custom firmware, and those other customers whose gameplay was interrupted by the attacks on Sony's online infrastructure. How the company chooses to address both sides of this issue could be important for the future success of its video game hardware.