“The hacker hordes of Anonymous have transferred their fickle attention to Sony. They are currently attacking the company’s online Playstation store in retribution for Sony’s lawsuit against PS3 hacker George Hotz. A denial of service attack has temporarily taken down playstation.com.”
As far as the DDOS attack, {shrug}
But this:
Now that’s how you do a real protest
Sadly, I doubt there will be enough real people who bother doing it to make a difference – and I doubt Sony will care.
I find the whole DDoS attack detestable. It serves no other purpose than to boost Anon script kiddies’ egos with the “look at me, look at me! i’m awesome!” – attitude. And it will only make Sony look like the victim which is quite the contrary what Anon claims they want.
Any news is good news!
A deserving victim, I would argue… serves them right.
I don’t understand that logic. First of all, it doesn’t hurt Sony in any way or form. No sane internation company buys bandwidth by amounts of usage, they pay a predefined sum, so that angle doesn’t cost Sony anything. Secondly, people not being able to access PSN or Sony’s website? Well, Sony can just explain that it was the Anonymous who did it, and voila, Sony has just gotten loads of positive PR while Anon got the negative one. Again, it doesn’t cost Sony anything and will just sway public opinion in their direction. Third, completely irrelevant and innocent users of Sony’s PSN getting screwed by this DDoS? Doesn’t hurt Sony in the least, it only makes those people angry at Anon.
So, Sony gets to look like a victim, gets positive reaction from general public, and gets even more support from law enforcement agencies. And that “serves them right”, now does it?
I don’t know of too many people (translation: no one) who I haven’t told who know about the Geohot case. Those I have told… don’t seem to really care. Similarly, when a service is down, most people immediately point fingers at the company in question (the ISP, PSN, Xbox Live, etc.) without second thought–not too many care or know what causes a network/service outage. And certainly not too many people are going to be visiting OSNews and Slashdot to find this stuff out for themselves, and if they did, after a bit of clicking around they would probably be sent to information about the Geohot case.
Again, I don’t think so. Not unless this somehow gets top attention on Fox News or something. But that kind of “news”–a company getting DDOSed by some, eh, “anonymous” group of people–doesn’t make money… and there is a never-ending goldmine constantly being tapped about murders, rapes, drug busts, and other crap that happens all the time that is more likely to grab the audience’s attention and keep them watching the news ($$$). That’s not going to change. Hell, how many people in, say, Fox News’ audience even know WTF a DDOS is? How many even care, or even be affected by it (ie. own a PS3 and try to play online at just the right time)? Probably extremely few, I would guess.
And on the second point… come on, those innocent Sony users should be used to it by now. In fact, if I were some clueless Sony user, by now I would probably think, “what’s new, same shit, different day.” Sony screws their customers all the time. Their users are basically bent over with Sony standing behind with their gigantic corporate hard-on.
Look no further than this lawsuit which spawned the DDOS–it was brought up against one of Sony’s own paying customers. Why? Because he gave people the keys to “unlock” the PS3 to use the OtherOS feature that Sony took away from them in the first place. Either OtherOS or PSN… but if you choose both, LAWSUIT! And I just have to give an honerable mention to the shit Sony pulled on their beloved users… the Sony Rootkit.
Also, if a news source does happen to actually report on this, and makes no mention of the Geohot case and the events leading up to it (removing features/functionality from purchased hardware), then chances are that news company is biased and/or in Sony’s pockets. In which case, it’s the fault of the one-sided news reporters for swaying the story in Sony’s favor.
Edited 2011-04-05 06:46 UTC
Bingo. There’s a right way and a wrong way to protest things. Virtual vandalism and inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of people who have nothing to do with Sony’s policies definitely falls into the latter.
Nothing will make me happier than seeing a three letter agency kicking in these puerile pricks’ doors when they piss off the wrong target.
Edited 2011-04-05 12:57 UTC
Vandalism means damaging property that isn’t yours. Anonymous isn’t damaging anything. In fact, Sony has damaged other people’s property by removing OtherOS support – so Sony are the vandals here.
You do realise that the whole idea of a protest or strike is to be inconvenient, right?
You’d make one damn fine Stasi agent.
Yeah, the hour or two last night PSN users couldn’t access their paid services and any subsequent losses it caused weren’t at all damaging. Nor were any of the issues that may have been caused tangentially to the attack.
Legitimate protests might be annoying, but they’re annoying within the bounds of the law. These arrogant script kiddies revel in breaking the laws of virtually any country they operate from. They deserve neither reverence nor protection from the consequences of their actions.
If breaking the law is required to get Sony to operate within the law, then so be it. It’s not like the US justice system will ever force Sony to adhere to the law.
Then stand up like men and openly accept the consequences. Don’t hide behind “Anonymous” like cowardly children with one face while claiming some supposed moral high ground with the other.
Until that happens these kiddies get nothing but contempt and ire.
I think the fact that Sony is now trying to completely ruin Hotz’ life is evidence enough as to why anonymity is a given here. Companies like Sony have no qualms about destroying lives if it suits their agenda. Especially in the US, it is dangerous to go into court with a large company on the other side of the aisle – whether you’re right or wrong.
Edited 2011-04-05 14:11 UTC
That’s the thing about being a martyr, you don’t get the privilege of dodging what you’ve started. If your convictions aren’t backed up by a personal willingness to endure personal cost to see them through, what value are your convictions?
There’s a difference though. People striking and protesting does so by standing up for something *in person* and not being anonymous.
“Anonymous” are just a bunch of attention-seeking script-kiddies hiding behind lame-ass masks who probably couldn’t come up with an original exploit to save their life.
*in person*…really?!
so -Libya type rebellions aside [where ignoring political persuasions, people truly are standing up to be counted and putting their lives on the line]- in lower-key direct actions such as the mass marches in the US and Western Europe against the last Iraq invasion or the recent demonstrations against public service cuts by a mean and irresponsible conservative government here in the UK, people have been pre-registering their dissent with officials through an online intent-to-gather form have they?! I must’ve missed that.
Unless they turn violent or start looting and get arrested the participants are similarly anonymous to Anonymous (both largely being identifiable to government agencies should the authorities wish to put the resources in but superficially they’re both anonymous).
..and I really wish people would stop using the term Script Kiddies in these scenarios willy nilly as if that automatically wins you argument points. I may well be mistaken but my take on it is that the Anonymous participants both in this case as well as Wikileaks seem to be taking action on something they (at least SEEM) to believe in the cause of. Therefore ‘Script Kiddies’ comes across as about as objective as if we kept calling Sony the ‘Corporate W*$%ers!’
Because their past actions indicate they are. “Raiding” Habbo, harrasing forums for people with epilepsy, defacing sites they just don’t like and posting porn on youtube etc etc. The work of concerned citizenz or attention-seeking losers?
Hitler did some good stuff too but I don’t see many people arguing we should celebrate that.
Edited 2011-04-06 04:15 UTC
Exactly, well said, Thom.
Actual vandalism: Keying, egging putting a dent in someone’s car, or probably even worse, putting water or sugar in their gas tank. Breaking the windows out of someone’s car or house. Breaking into their computers and deleting/modifying stuff and inserting malware of any kind. The Sony Rootkit… now THAT was a prime example of virtual vandalism, and it opened unsuspecting buyers of Sony CDs to some serious security vulnerabilities. Notice that all of these things actually cause *damage*, real damage, and in the case of physical damage… it can take a lot of money to repair.
Temporary inconvenience: Overloading Sony’s servers for a short time to get back at them for suing one of their users, and trying to show them that they’re not going to take that kind of attitude as paid users. What’s it hurt? Well, Sony’s servers deny their users service for a while until someone steps in to correct it, or the DDoSers stop attacking, and… boom, service is up and running again, nothing changed. No files were modified, no hardware damaged; they simply stressed the system for a short while.
Big, big difference there. I can’t just look at a broken window or damaged paint/body job and expect that with time it’s fixed… it just doesn’t work that way. Expect to pay hundreds of dollars in actual damage for something like that to get fixed.
If giving some other server a DoS is vandalism, then Slashdot should have been sued to hell and back by now because of their infamous Slashdot effect.
Edited 2011-04-05 20:07 UTC
First you say that doing virtual damage is indeed virtual vandalism, and then right next to it you say it isn’t vandalism. Way to counter yourself.
The Rootkit installed itself on users’ machines at the lowest level possible, gaining root access of the machine. Key words… *installed itself*. As in, modified the system. And in a big way, down to the kernel level, gaining complete access to hide itself and do its business (ie. work against the computer owner’s wishes by causing it to fail to rip audio CDs). The “fix” brought in some serious vulnerabilities. It was a great example why AutoRun is a bad idea, and could not even be trusted for what seemed to be innocent redbook audio CDs bought by an entity as “innocent” as a corporation.
In comparison, all the DDoS did was temporarily stress Sony’s machines, causing no permanent damage–just server downtime, until the incoming connections are few enough that the system could cope with it again. It did not modify the system in any major way other than maybe a massive log of incoming/outgoing connections.
What’s the contradiction? If they really want the DDoS to stop as soon as possible, they come in and modify their network to block attackers. If not, wait, and once it’s done the system will be working as usual anyway. Either way, same outcome; some downtime followed by business as usual.
Vandalization = Actual damage; unintended and undesired system modification. Rootkit.
Inconvenience = This case of server downtime. DDoS.
Once news breaks here that someone has used a DDoS attack (or used some other method of gaining access) to purposely break into and tamper with Sony’s systems, then things change. *Then* it’s vandalism, intrusion, etc. But as it is, it’s just a minor inconvenience for PS3 online players because Sony’s machines just can’t handle the extra connections. They just had to wait it out a bit if they wanted to continue flipping over Giant Enemy Crabs and attacking their weak points for MASSIVE DAMAGE to get higher scores than their online friends. [Sorry, just had to pull off the E3 joke, as old and unfunny as it probably is these days.]
Maybe instead of pissing off the public, Sony could have avoided all this by not being assholes, and not going to court over their users’ freedom of the devices they own. That money Sony blew (and is continuing to blow) to fight against jailbreaking in the courts could have been better spent on, oh, I don’t know… upgraded hardware that would take more of a beating under heavy loads? Just a thought. Then again, if Sony never brought this upon themselves, they wouldn’t be facing a DDoS attack in the first place. All of the things they could be doing and spending money on to improve the experience of their users… yet it seems they would prefer to be assholes every step of the way. Their (and their customers’) problem that they keep shooting themselves in the foot.
Edited 2011-04-06 01:48 UTC
van·dal·ize
(vndl-z)
tr.v. van·dal·ized, van·dal·iz·ing, van·dal·iz·es
To destroy or deface (public or private property) willfully or maliciously.
The rootkit wasn’t intended to cause all the issues it did, ergo it wasn’t trying to destroy or deface anything willfully. The fact that Sony devs were incompetent doesn’t mean it was an act of vandalism.
Note that I am not arguing that what Sony has done has been in any way or form acceptable. I am just saying you’re using the term ‘vandalism’ incorrectly.
Yes, I wonder how many people know anything about this. Thinking about the people I know, I can hear the conversation now: “Wikileaks what? Anonymous? Homebrew? I play Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto with a 13 year old in Florida.” The only people who know or care about this outside of Sony are the small group of nerds who read OSNews and other nerd news websites. I wonder how many people know their PS3 plays BluRay movies. I wonder how many people know, or could tell the difference between BluRay and regular DVDs. Even if they have heard of homebrew, they would be too lazy to do the work, or too scared they’d break something. This is all a scam by some lonely nerds who think they’re picking a fight about something that matters, when it really doesn’t. Even if it does. And it does, but nobody else will ever know or care. Any protesters will just be made fun of again just like when they were in school.
If anyone wants to join festivities on April 16th, you can search for a local Sony Store here:
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?…
Better do it while the site is still responsive
Looks like the closest one to me is ~3 hours away, so I’ll be sitting this one out guys.
They are still alive even if the anon-hype is over and lawsuit in progress. I was quite sure the movement would lose much of its strength after a few week. But apparently they still have the fire power to take down target used to multi million simultaneous visitors.
I dont think it come from peoples having forgotten that ion cannon thing open for months, they must have one (or both) of these things: an ever increasing in power botnet or real supporters.
Are they the “good peoples”, definitely not. But at the same time, like it or not, they do defend peoples interest against abusive corporate power and corporate driven government action, slowing the *slow* “advance” coming from the lobbying front. So, in the end, are those kids “outlaw hero” like modern robin hood, just dumb kids playing batman or simple criminals with no better idea and/or an appetite for visibility?
By blocking legitimate users from accessing services they’re paying for? Nope, that logic doesn’t fly.
Indeed.
Well, it make the news and make issue more visible outside of the deep geek-o-sphere, for what it worth.
Elv13,
“But at the same time, like it or not, they do defend peoples interest against abusive corporate power”
WereCatf,
“By blocking legitimate users from accessing services they’re paying for? Nope, that logic doesn’t fly.”
Well, in a Martin Luther King type of way, it actually does make some sense.
(Please don’t misinterpret this comment as suggesting that taking arms against Sony has the same merit as fighting racism.)
Hypothetically, MLK probably would condone DOS attacks too if they helped his cause.
It’s true a DOS blocks “legitimate users”, just like MLK’s human roadblocks, standins, sitins, etc interfere with public activities. For him, it was a way to send a message, peacefully. He could not fight the oppressors directly, he was powerless that way. He fought by forcing others to get involved.
Edited 2011-04-05 05:40 UTC
Comparing Anonymous to Martin Luther King makes me just sick. Firstly King never hide his face, quite opposite he gave himself as example of fight against racism. King fought against goverment legistation, anonymous is just bullying company that has all rights to sue Hotz. Besides King was fighting goverment which isn’t same as private enterprise. DDOS isn’t same as protesting outside company store since people can still access those stores.
Edited 2011-04-05 09:59 UTC
Have you ever seen a real protest or strike? They pretty much completely grind any form of business to a halt. In fact, a DDOS is far LESS destructive than a real-world protest, since it’s a lot harder to deny people the right to stand in front of your store.
Jeesh go out Thom. We are talking shopping boycotts where protestors go outside shop and try convince people not buy products. What you seem to think is bigger demonstrations against something where anarchy clowns try mash stuff up. Most demonstrations are aimed to goverment or bigger issue, not single company. There has been several tries in Facebook for both big demonstrations and shop boycotts, all failed miserably when only few people of thousands show actually up. Internet has made people fat and loud mouthy, nothing else. Egypt and Tunis changes where fueled by cellphones, not internet.
The best way to get a company to change is to hit them where it hurts: their wallets. By Getting PSN and such offline, customers complain to Sony, which, if protracted long enough, could lead to serious financial damage for Sony. So much so, even, that they may change their policies.
Companies bigger than Sony have been forced to give in to public demand, like large international financial institutions in the Netherlands retracting bonuses given to top-level managers.
A lot of people here are all like “ZOMG I CANT PLAY CAL OF DUTY FOR A FEW HOURS ZOMG!1ONEONEONE!!!”. Well, fcuk your stupid videogame. Even if it requires taking down PSN for weeks on end – if it leads to Sony no longer doing things like root kits and removing advertised functionality post-sale, it will be MORE than worth it.
So if I dislike something you say or do or something that another OSNews author says or does, I can DDoS your site and you’ll be just fine with that? You also won’t get the law involved either right? Or is vigilante justice only okay if it’s a target YOU dislike?
What Sony is doing is against the law in MANY countries. However, due to the financial reserves and influence of such a large company, we as individuals do not have the means to do anything about it. People have purchased a product, and then Sony comes and removes an advertised, paid-for part of it.
Would you accept Toyota just barging in and taking your advertised and paid-for car radio? Or is this vigilante justice only when it does not affect you?
Saying somethig you dislike on OSNews is not against the law. Stealing – what Sony has done – is.
Stop trying to pose everything as only having two extremes. There’s plenty of ways of showing that one doesn’t accept such behaviour, without having to resort to equally deplorable actions oneself.
That’s funny. When speaking of software piracy you say it’s not stealing because it’s all software, a virtual object, which has no physical value and thus can’t be stolen, but here you’re saying it actually IS stealing. Hell, it can’t even then be stealing as Sony didn’t take the software from you for their own use; they are the ones who provided it in the first place!
What they did was disable an advertised core part of a product, but they never once stole it.
Karitku,
“Comparing Anonymous to Martin Luther King makes me just sick. Firstly King never hide his face, quite opposite he gave himself as example of fight against racism. King fought against goverment legistation, anonymous is just bullying company that has all rights to sue Hotz. Besides King was fighting goverment which isn’t same as private enterprise. DDOS isn’t same as protesting outside company store since people can still access those stores.”
I didn’t even make that comparison, you just invented it.
I knew someone would misinterpret my post that way, which is why I even stated that up front. Of course I know that fighting racism on the streets is different than fighting sony’s overreaching control…duh!
My point was that MLK strategies would probably include some form of DOS in today’s digital age if it helped him get people to notice his cause. And to that end, you haven’t really provided a valid rebuttal.
I had to register because this is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever read in these comments. Sorry, no offense.
First off, Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t fighting against a private company. Martin Luther King would use boycotting/marches/protest/sit-ins as a strategy, he wouldn’t use a strategy that would negatively affect the people who he would want to support him. Doing a DDoS against Sony’s website of the PSN doesn’t do anything except probably annoy people. Martin Luther King wasn’t as dumb as you seem to think. If you honestly believe he would condone this childish BS or think it’s a good strategy, then you must think the guy was pretty stupid.
“First off, Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t fighting against a private company.”
Again, I never claimed he was. Don’t people read?
“Martin Luther King would use boycotting/marches/protest/sit-ins as a strategy, he wouldn’t use a strategy that would negatively affect the people who he would want to support him.”
Ah, but his protests did deliberately inconvenience people’s everyday lives in order to get attention and force a public dialogue. If he hadn’t then nobody would take notice.
Q. What does a protest accomplish if nobody pays attention? A. Not very much.
“Doing a DDoS against Sony’s website of the PSN doesn’t do anything except probably annoy people.”
That is the general idea…it forces more people to take notice.
“Martin Luther King wasn’t as dumb as you seem to think.”
Straw man.
“If you honestly believe he would condone this childish BS or think it’s a good strategy, then you must think the guy was pretty stupid.”
You continue to misread my comments. I never defended the DOS attack in the first place.
If their (Anonymous) goal is to get attention (and I’m pretty sure it is), then it worked. They got media attention from news outlets everywhere. They got more exposure via this disruption than they could have through more legitimate channels. You and I don’t have to agree with what they’ve done to admit that this is actually true.
I don’t quite believe your argument. MLK’s whole intention was to give all those oppressed people real, tangible faces for people to see and to force them to interact with all those people they oppress. The point wasn’t to disrupt anything in and of itself, it was merely a side-effect of it. And even then, it was local; it didn’t effect any other countries or their residents who can’t affect the outcome anyways.
Now, Anonymous’s whole point was indeed to disrupt usage and it affects people all around the world, including those who can’t do anything about it anyways. And all this while never showing their faces or come out in the open to actually interact with people face-to-face.
I really don’t think they’re comparable in the least.
WereCatf,
“The point wasn’t to disrupt anything in and of itself, it was merely a side-effect of it.”
That is an interesting point.
In the minds of Anonymous members, was the DDOS against Sony users the ends in and of itself? Or was it the means to push for an ulterior outcome?
From all the comments and discussion I’ve seen it’s only been about “vengeance.” Of course, I cannot claim that it applies to all of them, there’s always individuals in every group, but given the large amount of comments and “discussion” I’ve witnessed and the sheer malice in them I cannot but get the feeling it’s the same for majority of Anon members.
Walmart positions the PS3 Slim at the center of a golden triangle of console video games, Internet enabled HDTVS, and rack upon rack of DVD and Blu-Ray videos.
Walmart knows what sells –
and it isn’t Homebrew and it isn’t the OtherOS.
Blu-Ray at Walmart is very much alive. But the PS3 Fat is close on to three years dead.
Each new Arkham City, Black Ops game, Blu-Ray rental or high-definition Netflix stream is a vote for the firmware upgrade.
You can’t claim such. You can’t just somehow expect everyone to know what CFW is or that they even have the possibility of using homebrew. Not to mention the whole hassle of backing up your games and modifying eboot.bin to get it working on lower firmware and whatnot.
If anything, it’s a choice between homebrew and online gaming, and for most people online gaming wins.
I’m sorry to sound blunt, but that’s got no relevence to this article.
It’s not about what currently sells. It’s about removing features from previously sold devices. It’s about taking people to court because they hacked their own hardware. And it’s about the disgraceful techniques Sony are using to undermine Holtz (this isn’t a fair trial in the slightest).
I couldn’t careless if XYZ now sells better than ABC just so long as the manufacturers of ABC don’t remotely nuke /MY/ equipment /post/ purchase.
It is relevant to the power of Anonymous – and of the geek – to bring about any meaningful change.
48 million consoles.
69 million PSN accounts. 17 million PlayStation Home social networking accounts. 4 million MOVE controllers.
This is the constituency that matters to Sony – and the PS3 – sans the OtherOS, SACD and PS2 emulation – seems to serve it very, very well.
You’re comments weren’t about a meaningful change though. It was just highlighting what one supermarket sells in preference to other products. It’s completely irrellevent.
Plus it’s not the just of a few anonymous script kiddies to change the buying habits of a global community of media consumers.
just = job.
Wish I spotted that back while I could still edit comments.
doh.
If this were true then the ‘movement’ would have died out in 2004.
It’s like a bowel movement; there is always an inflow of new raw materials.
I believe these actions are a symptom of a large group of people feeling they have no voice in our society.
I believe these actions are a symptom of a small group of nerds living in their mother’s basements!
And yet they seem less morally questionable then the Sony executives in their expensive condos.
Edited 2011-04-05 06:30 UTC
I don’t see morals on either side.
What does the price of anybody’s condo have to do with this? Your comment suggests that since a Sony executive might or might not have an expensive condo it is morally just to cut off access to regular, innocent Playstation users. How do you know “Anonymous” don’t have expensive condos? How many Sony executives or “Anonymous” do you know?
This is no Boston Tea Party or storming of the Bastille. This is just causing unknown collateral damage to innocent users who will temporarily not have access to playstation.com. This will only cause these innocent users to get mad at “Anonymous” and side with Sony. I don’t agree with Sony’s lawsuit AT ALL, but a smarter thing to do would be to create more access to the work that Sony hates so much. A denial of service attack on playstation.com is nothing more than a loud bark with no bite. Talking loud and then turning the other way. It doesn’t take a genius to flood the internets. I actually see it as being lazy and empty of any good ideas.
An equivalent of the Boston Tea Party would be more destructive – hijacking a truck delivering PS3s to a store, and driving it into a river.
We should dress as our favorite Nintendo (Microsoft?) characters to pull this off.
and yet they’re still losers.
Because they do not have voice, and noone listen to them i think. It is like fight between of some community and corporations, that got money and stuff. also those attacks from the community side show, that big money from big corps can’t help to their customers. Maybe this si what they want to show by their ddos etc. To make people remember that corps do not care about them.
Sony is doing a good enough job showing they don’t care about their customers on their own.
What did Sony do wrong here? I think they have a right to want to keep their platform closed since it is kind of the point.
For those that want more access to their systems, there is the PC for that.
What am I missing?