Hacker group Anonymous denies Sony attack













More than a million users have been affected by the security breach




Online
vigilante group Anonymous has denied being behind an attack that led to
the theft of personal data from around 77 million PlayStation users.



The secretive "hacker collective" had earlier been singled-out by Sony as the possible guilty party.
But a posting on Anonymous' blog said: "Let's be clear, we are legion, but it wasn't us. You are incompetent Sony."

The electronics giant has offered compensation to users who suffer fraud as a result of the theft.
Earlier this week, Sony sent a letter to the US Congress accusing Anonymous of being involved in the attack.

"Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very
professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack," said the
letter, signed by Sony America boss Kazuo Hirai.


He said that Sony had found a file planted on its network labelled "Anonymous" and bearing the group's slogan, "We are legion".

But Anonymous said that it had been framed by online thieves to throw law enforcement off track.


“Start Quote

Whoever broke into Sony's servers... clearly wanted Anonymous to be blamed for the most significant digital theft in history”

Anonymous' statement




The group, which made headlines
in December 2010 after it used software freely available over the
internet to temporarily bring down the sites of MasterCard and Visa,
said that its members were not credit card thieves.
"Whoever broke into Sony's servers to steal the credit card
info and left a document blaming Anonymous clearly wanted Anonymous to
be blamed for the most significant digital theft in history," the statement read.

Revenge attack
According to Sony, the group targeted the company and
facilitated the hacking in retaliation for the electronics giant's
recent legal action against George Hotz.

The US-based hacker was accused of breaking copyright laws by
devising a way to change the operating system on Sony PlayStations.

The case was eventually settled after Mr Hotz agreed not to repeat such behaviour in future.
Sony claimed that the massive data theft also coincided with a
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on its website by
Anonymous.






Kazuo Hirai, Sony America boss, said the company found a file on its network labelled "Anonymous"


Denial-of-service attacks take servers down by overwhelming them with traffic.

But Anonymous denies all responsibility for allowing access to online gamers' data, including millions of credit card numbers.

"No one who is actually associated with our movement would do
something that would prompt a massive law enforcement response," said
the group's statement.

"On the other hand, a group of standard online thieves would
have every reason to frame Anonymous in order to put law enforcement off
the track."

Apologies and compensation
Meanwhile, Sony's CEO Sir Howard Stringer has apologised for the first time to all those affected by the security breach.“Start Quote

To date, there is no confirmed evidence any credit card or personal information has been misused”

Sir Howard Stringer Sony's CEO




In a blog post on the
PlayStation website, he wrote that the company was working on
heightening security measures to "protect your information better than
ever".

He also offered compensation to US PlayStation Network and
Qriocity users in the form of a year-long free enrolment in an identity
protection programme.


The programme includes a $1m (£608,000) identity theft
insurance policy for each user, should they become victims of any future
cyber-attacks.

In a bid to reassure Sony's customers and regain their trust,
Mr Stringer added that "to date, there is no confirmed evidence any
credit card or personal information has been misused, and we continue to
monitor the situation closely."

Many PlayStation Network users have been upset about the
company taking two days after discovering the theft before contacting
law enforcement and almost a week to inform the people affected by the
breach, after it was first discovered on 20 April.


Targeting Viacom




Anonymous has issued a warning to Viacom



After publishing its statement regarding Sony,
Anonymous also issued a warning to entertainment giant Viacom.
The group said that because of Viacom, "thousands of people
have undergone the unfortunate experience of receiving falsely-claimed
copyright infringements".


Viacom is known for taking aggressive legal action to get its content removed from video sharing websites.

In 2007, the company attempted to sue YouTube for $1bn (£608m).
As part of its counter-action, YouTube's parent company
Google accused Viacom of uploading some videos itself and manipulating
them to look like amateur copies.

The case against YouTube was eventually thrown out.

In its statement, Anonymous wrote: "Anonymous demands from
Viacom a public press release to admit and apologise for the fraud and
crimes that they have committed.

"Anonymous also demands that Viacom allows everyone throughout the internet full rights to be able to express themselves.


"Lastly, we, the citizens of the world, demand that Viacom
stops their attempts to gather personally identifying information such
as IPs, which are of no relevance to them."