Observers of the IRC channel #opsony, supposedly used by the Anonymous hacking group to coordinate their attacks against Sony, have reported that the group plans to launch a third wave of hacking offensive. The IRC channel was inaccessible at the time of publication.
The first wave would have been the DDoS attacks that caused a stir in early April. The second wave would have been the theft of 100 million user account data files, along with 10 million credit card details.
Sony implicated Anonymous in the security breach, having recently discovered a calling card. “We discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named ‘Anonymous’ with the words ‘We are Legion’,” said Sony communications chief Patrick Seybold.
However, some elements claiming to represent Anonymous have denied being involved. “If a legitimate and honest investigation into credit card theft is conducted, Anonymous will not be found liable. While we are a distributed and decentralised group, our ‘leadership’ does not condone credit card theft,” said a representative of the Anonymous collective.
Those Anonymous threatening a third attack claim that they will hack Sony websites this weekend, and publish information copied from Sony’s servers, including customer names, addresses and credit card numbers. The hackers even claim that they have access to some of Sony’s servers – the fact that a calling card was left behind could also mean that other backdoor access holes were left by the hackers.
Such a coup would be devastating for Sony, which is still trying to recover from the fallout of the previous breach. Governmental organisations and global IT security firms are crawling all over this issue trying to root out the culprits. It’s almost unbelievable that hackers would be brazen enough to perform yet another attack against Sony. Then again, one would never expect a major corporation to be so sloppy with their security and customer’s sensitive data.
Meanwhile, Sony continues to promise that the PSN service will be restored ‘this week’ but with Friday fast coming to a close they are running out of time to deliver on that promise. Many jaded with Sony may believe these are empty promises. The prospect of another hacking offensive against their websites might just prevent Sony from re-launching PSN services this weekend – or at least give them a convenient excuse.
The whole state of affairs is rather muddled. Could it be that Anonymous has become the scapegoat for a group of organised criminals, who are leaving Anonymous themed calling cards as red herrings? Could said criminal hackers be taking things a step further with an attack that reveals Sony customer information? If so, to what end? Surely they already have what they came for.
Then again, perhaps certain elements of the Anonymous hacker collective should be given far more credit than was attributed previously – after all, they did issue their classic ominous warning “Expect us.”
What do you make of the renewed threats of hacking against Sony? << Share your thoughts on the MyGaming forum.
Source: C-Net
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