A few days ago the infamous hacking group Anonymous released a new video threatening to "destroy" Sony's network. Despite only the Sony movies and music portion of the company supporting the much-hated SOPA, it was fair assumption that included in the attacks would be Sony's PS3 and the PlayStation Network. After all, earlier this year Sony's PlayStation Network was brought down in similar hacks.
As it turns out, PS3 consumers are not going to be hamed – or so says #OPSony, a subsection of Anonymous dedicated to attacking and damaging Sony. Originally having a welcome message on their IRC that read, “Hello, and welcome to Operation Sony! | Must kill SONY for siding with destroying our lovely home (The Internet). Let’s give them hell," it now appears #OPSony has changed their mind. Anonymous was originally targeting Sony for their support of SOPA, but given the recent flip-flopping, and Sony no longer supporting the bill, it looks like Sony and its PS3 consumers are safe.
PlayStation Lifestyle reported the new welcome messaged changed to "NO SOPA! NO ATTACK ON PSN!" The 'pad' used for planning operations was also updated to say, "That means we are NOT touching the PlayStation Network. Don't mention it again!"
While the group promised not to "dox", or find personal information about a person online, normal PS3 customers, they did say that "doxing" will occur n Sony executives. They didn't specifically mention which ones, but I'd hate to see innocent Sony employees attacked for a few higher executives political standpoint. The group has already started posting sensitive information like credit card numbers of a few Sony employees.
Reports say that the group also plans on defacing the Sony website with popular internet memes with an anti-SOPA twist, and place links to copyrighted material on their sites – even going so far as making all of Sony's films and music available to download for free on Sony's own sites.
While PS3 users and the PlayStation Network are safe for now, #OPSony could change their mind. There are some who actually support the attack on PlayStation 3 consumers.
“If you want to get your message across, PSN is a great way to get ppls attention”
“Just taking down the DB for some time would make Sony worried about all the CC numbers even if we don’t copy the numbers. Parents would get really frightened at PSN’s safety and players wouldn’t get any new PSN games. Database would be backup restored, everything is somewhat back to normal and attention will be added.”
“Please consider a possibility that the PSN could be deleted for a short time. Sony declares the database to be leaked. Parents all over the world panic and never dare enter credentials into PSN again. Sony loses money.”
While I am anti-SOPA, I don't necessarily agree with Anonymous' way of going about this. Hacking and releasing sensitive information is a certain way to scare the less informed politicians voting on this. Those who aren't tech savvy will be scared into voting for the new bill in hopes of quelling the hacks. Nothing makes people vote more irrationally then being scared.
