{"id":11121,"date":"2011-04-06T10:04:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-06T08:04:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"sony-combats-ddos-attacks-anonymous-hackers-falter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/11121-sony-combats-ddos-attacks-anonymous-hackers-falter","title":{"rendered":"Sony combats DDoS attacks, Anonymous hackers falter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The week began with a threatening message<\/a> by hackers claiming to be part of the Anonymous hacking outfit. The message laid out in clear terms an intention to disrupt Sony websites and services as a result of their continued lawsuits against PS3 hackers George ‘GeoHot’ Hotz and Alexander ‘graf_chokolo’ Egorenkov.<\/p>\n

The threats were soon carried out<\/a> with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks taking down Sony.com, PlayStation.com and affecting the PlayStation Network. Attack OpSony had begun.<\/p>\n

At first, Sony attributed the PSN downtime to intermittent maintenance being carried out. However, Sony senior director of corporate communications and social media Patrick Seybold soon posted the following on the PlayStation blog<\/a>: “We’re aware that some of you have been experiencing intermittent service on PSN today. We’re working on finding a solution, and will report back here as soon as it’s resolved. Thank you for your patience.”<\/p>\n

Speaking to Joystiq<\/a> he further highlighted the fact that the immediate victims of these attacks are the gamers: “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, and we appreciate our customers’ continued support.”<\/p>\n

According to a report by PlayStation Lifestyle<\/a>, Sony has now enlisted the aid of security firm and anti-DDoS specialists Prolexic Technologies<\/a>. This has seemingly turned the tide for now, as the Anonymous mob have been expressing their frustration in their IRC attack coordination chat channel<\/a>. Gamers have also been observed entering the IRC channel and appealing to the attackers to stop as they are merely ruining their gaming experiences. These people are soon kicked from the channel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To elaborate on this issue, a brief explanation of DDoS and ways in which it can be excuted. A DDoS is a rudimentary yet effective way to bring down a website by overloading the server with requests from multiple sources. These types of attacks can be carried out by using a simple software package into which target server settings are entered. An example of such a software package is Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) – an affectionate moniker born of a meme referring to a weapon in the Command & Conquer series.<\/p>\n

LOIC can be easily distributed to Anonymous hacking ‘foot-soldiers’ (aka script kiddies) who may not have hacking talents themselves, but nonetheless want to contribute to the offensive. Any true-blooded hacker will rightly scoff at labelling these particular individuals as ‘hackers,’ preferring instead to call them script kiddies. Nevertheless, they form an integral part of a planned and sustained DDoS offensive.<\/p>\n

The problem with these minions is that they are fickle, and may come and go as part of the offensive without much reliability for the attack leaders. Like any good minion, they often take the fall for their leaders as well; they may not think through their individual assault, leaving themselves open to being easily traced via ISPs through their IP address. In January 2011 pro-WikiLeaks attacks led to the arrest of five UK youths for taking part in DDoS attacks using LOIC. While they were likely not the masterminds of the attacks, they will be charged under the UKs Computer Misuse Act.<\/p>\n

This when things begin to ‘get real’; a malicious and sustained attack on a large corporation and commercial internet service is no laughing matter. Unfortunately many Anonymous members are simply along for the ride, roped in because the concept of ‘sticking it’ to Sony seemed funny at the time – ‘in it for the lulz’ to use the vernacular.<\/p>\n

One of the problems being experienced by Anonymous at this point in their offensive against Sony is a lack of ‘script kiddie’ minions to pull off the necessary scale of DDoS attack. With only a small number of contributing attackers and a specialist protection firm in place, the hacking attack has faltered for now, having no real effect on Sony websites and services.<\/p>\n

This will likely be the first of many tests of resolve for this particular movement of Anonymous. Will they prove to be little more than a rabble rousing group of script kiddies that will lose motivation and become bored when faced with obstacles, or will they escalate their attacks to prove they really do have an ideal they are fighting for?<\/p>\n

There are serious ramifications to the latter outcome. Certain factions of Anonymous have already begun spearheading a drive to gather personal information on Sony employees and are planning to implement malicious psychological attacks<\/a>. Other plans include widening the scope of the attack to hit at random various companies that are affiliated with Sony.<\/p>\n

It is early days for the attack dubbed OpSony and it remains to be seen if Anonymous can actually affect Sony to the extent that they are completely deterred from pursuing their legal case against PS3 hackers. For that to happen, Anonymous would have to pull of an unrelenting attack of such scale that it completely hamstrings Sony’s online operations. Some might suggest that this is unlikely, and the attempts to do so will only strengthen Sony’s resolve to make an example of PS3 hackers.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on the Anonymous hack attack against Sony?<\/strong><\/a> << Share your thoughts on the MyGaming forum<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anonymous faces their first obstacle in OpSony; do they have the resolve to continue the fight?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}