Hacked to death: Sony faces crunch-time over PSN failures

I think some people are missing the point here. Sony can hire private mercenaries to blow down GeoHotz door and brain him for all the difference it makes to us. Morality and ethics are not part of this equation. Sony is in the wrong because, and only because, PSN is down. The “root causes” of PSN being down are irrelevant. This industry is not a charity and we aren’t missionaries. PSN is down; Wii, XBL, and the Internet aren’t; therefore it’s Sony’s fault.

Also, let’s be realistic about “Anonymous.” They’re not al Qaeda. They’re not even Razor1911. They’re a bunch of jerkoff 4chan users. Their membership is composed of whoever wants to be a jerkoff on a given night. This isn’t some kind of chess game Sony is waging with a sinister hacker group. There is no endgame that involves “the leaders” going to jail. Basically, Anonymous is just anonymous, except they use the uppercase. That’s why Sony’s poor security is the issue here, not some shadowy “other side.” They can’t fight against every Bachelor Frog-making script kiddie on the Internet.

And can you stop showing a Fawkes mask every time you mention this group (sic). The analogy behind it is an absolute fucking joke and an offence to students of the history of democracy, law and the humanities.

@102
thats funny..just some blabla about shitty anonymous and thought:” wtf not again a Fawkes mask”

he was a good guy, they are not.

So if I get your logic.

When Sony went and removed a feature from a device which was the only reason these “thousand” bought the device, thats a inconvenience.

Not being able to play Portal 2 this weekend, its a punishment?

Ok,

All these Gaming Mag, and WebSites, are journalist. They support freedom of speech.

Lets not forget, what GeoHot did so far has not been considered ILEGAL.
Not that Sony cared. It clearly has no problems lying about facts.

HOWEVER,

The truly beautiful thing here is.

Sony sued GeoHot to show the world what happens when you F*** with them.

Now Anonymous is showing the world what happens when you F*** with them

and guess who will win? Not the lawyers

Good article, pointing out the v heavy implications for Sony if this continues. That is all I have to say.

Anonymous are fuckings fags, anyone saying anything else is an idiot.

Sure, maybe GeoHotz was falsely accused. I don’t give a shit about that case.

But what Anon is doing is stupid, why don’t they just go and catch animal-killers…that’s what they’re good at.

Wow another click bait story blown out of proportion, but I would not expect anything else form the likes of Patrick G.

It’s a shame that real truth in reporting and a true unbiased report seem to be missed and in turn it is replaced by a essay of personal words that have no meaning other then to express “Patricks G” own feelings and nothing more.

A real unbiased and adult approach to reporting does not inject personal feelings and then escalate it into a soap box rant on why the reporter hates everything Sony.

Now true adults will see this so called story ” and this is what it truly is, “A Story”, for what it is, A blogger using a site to push out his anger and hate for a company, while trying so hard to get others on board to feel the same way, but the attempt fails so badly due to the extensive dribble that goes on and on trying desperately to prove his point but then fails by showing itself for what it is in the end.

A true report would point out the facts and keep personal bias at bay, but Patrick being true to his form, fails.

It would be refreshing to see a non hate story and a real report come to these pages instead of generated click bait hate.

How about Patrick you report that Sony has decided to rebuild the full PSN NETWORK From the ground up, and include that if it wasn’t for the HACKERS that started this all the PSN USERS would have service now.

No, I don’t blame Sony, just a few loud mouth idiots that yell a little more and then only give the illusion of a wider range of users that are upset but this is not the case, if you go to the Sony site and do some real investigation you would see that the support is on Sony’s side, and more and more people are expressing in a loud way how upset they are with these hacking groups.

Sony has more support now due to all this backfiring on theses hacking groups, now folks are fed up and have voiced very loudly that the hackers are the ones they are upset with.

Sony is looking like a peach compared to the hackers, and of course this is contrary to your self induced painfully worded rant that is just a feel sorry for the hackers, Sony deserves this blog post Patrick.

To many excuses are made to why Sony deserves this, but if the shoe was on the other foot and if it was your company that had this happening to it, you would do whatever it takes to protect what you have built. And anyone that says any different is fooling themselves and is not being honest.

@ 107

Respect man

The “Real” anonymous doesn’t even use the Guy Fawkes mask.

>_>

Why does Pat hate Sony so much ? It’s just embarrassing to keep hearing it.

Grow some professionalism Garratt !

I’ve added in the latest update from Seybold about “rebuilding” PSN.

Hang on, Anonymous are the ones who have stopped me from playing on PSN all holiday weekend not Sony. Sony didn’t take PSN down over holiday weekend for shits and giggles. Piss off Anonymous.

Wasn’t Guy Fawkes a terrorist?
If he’d have succeeded then the Catholics and the Spanish would have made damned sure democracy was a dirty word.
Don’t let’s get carried away with whom Anonymous choose as a figurehead.
Fawkes was a bastard and so are they.

^ Yep, he was no ‘great revolutionary’ as some seem to believe.

Sony turned PSN off to repair the system to help prevent future security breaches because all hackers aren’t our friends, the only kind of hacker the majority of us will ever cross paths with are the malicious ones, those who create viruses & commit fraud among other dangerous activities.

I’m not saying all hackers are bad, I respect those programmers & developers who follow the laws to make products better, unfortunately the laws are a little hazy for guys like GeoHot although i would have expected Sony to come after him because he just opened an exploit for those malicious hackers that I mentioned-the very guys that essentially killed the PSP & made Internet Explorer essentially unusable & Windows a risky OS which forces us to obtain additional security that weakens the overall performance.

People seem to miss how important publishing the root key was. By doing so Hotz gave anyone who can code access to PSN. You can access to PSN, you can get access to people’s personal information, names, addresses, card details etc.

Sony HAD to take PSN offline ’til they secure it lest they wish to get court cases against themselves for breach of the Data Protection Act. It’s why such security has to be in place to start with.

Sure there might be the odd hacker out there who just wants a job, has no CV, so the only way is to prove to a potential employee what they can do. Hotz did no such thing the moment he published the root key. For every hacker there is that just wants a job there probably another 20 who just want to mess with stuff for shits and giggles. And after those 20 there’s probably another 20 who see this as an easy meal ticket and want people’s card details.

Hackers are not soft and cuddly friendly little scamps who only have the general public’s well being at heart. Nor are they monsters. For the most part they’re just twats with too much time on their hands and just want to piss about with stuff they shouldn’t and have no right to.

@113 Couldn’t agree more and aye he was a religious terrorist.

Allot of people seem to think that you need to take sides in this case. And that VG247 has “chosen” to take a “stance against Sony”.

But that isn’t the case.
The article simply looks at what happend and has some legitimate criticsms against how the situation is handeled.
Sony isn’t some helpless sheep lost amongst the internet that requires your “support”.

It’s a multimillion dollar company. Handeling the security of it’s network should be a top priority. PSN shoulden’t be able to be taken down so easely. Lawsuites shoulden’t be thrown around so frivolously and get out of hand so badely.
Things that effect themselfs and their customers in a negative way (bad PR and loss of service) by not properly dealing with their problems.

I never understood why people would defend a company unless they worked for it. A lot of Sony staff must read this site, judging by the comments!

Personally I thought the article was very balanced and factual, although maybe a bit melodramatic in places. Seems like most of you guys have missed the point here though.

The PS3 was hacked because SOny didn’t manage the security properly, and Geohot exposed the keys and embarrassed the company. They took him to court – a fair response. The iphone case focused on mainly whether Jailbreaking was legal or not. And it was judged to be legal. This case focused on nonsensical issues and Sony generally handled this exceptionally badly. They spent most of the time trying to convince the court that Geohot should be forced to travel to California. They claimed he was profiting from his work by sending him money themselves.

They claimed that piracy and profit was the motive, although this was never proven, mainly because it wasn’t true.

Then Anonymous started their crusade. This caused the first PSN outage, but then it seems that they realised that pissing off gamers wasn’t the right way of doing things, and changed tactics.

And now PSN is down AGAIN, over a major public holiday, at teh same time as a major title release, and Sony blame Anonymous for another attack – although it’s apparently not them?

So in short, yes Sony has been victim in a couple of incidents, but the way they have handled it from day one has been borderline incompetent.

Patrick needs to get a job at Faux news already writing shit paper like this.

I swear this better not be the work of Skynet o_O

People who thinks that Patrick hates Sony need to go back to school or they are high or something.

@140UC,
“How about Patrick you report that Sony has decided to rebuild the full PSN NETWORK From the ground up, and include that if it wasn’t for the HACKERS that started this all the PSN USERS would have service now.”

prove link please? No? Ok.

“It’s a shame that real truth in reporting and a true unbiased report seem to be missed and in turn it is replaced by a essay of personal words that have no meaning other then to express “Patricks G” own feelings and nothing more.”

Same to you with this giant wall of text of MOAN and bitching about how: Garrat hates Sony, How Garrat is WRONG, how i hate this article because i love Sony to death.

This site is full of Sony fanboys. If this news could represent Nintendo or Microsoft 90% of people would say TRASH about it.

some people need here a serious medical treatment.

“I never understood why people would defend a company unless they worked for it.”

It’s not so much defending them out of a blind devotion to the brand, just a simple case of enjoying their product, and wanting to see them succeed so that they can continue to supply more of it.

I’m a Sony fan this gen, mainly due to their decision to make online a free service and their commitment to blockbuster single player games. It’s got nothing to do with seeing a Sony logo on the box, more to do with the product that’s inside it.

As to the article itself, well as has been rightly said, it’s steeped in unnecessary melodrama, and it’s so unrelenting in it’s criticism of Sony’s actions, that it’s hard to view it as anything other an assassination piece.

I’ve no problem seeing Sony hauled over the coals for making poor decisions and having lax security. My credit card information is on their servers too, so if Sony are inadequately protecting that information, then I’m happy to see them publicly mocked for it, so that they can learn, improve and come back with a better more secure system.

That said, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Pat gave the actual hackers who have caused this outage an unnecessary free pass. Pat seems to have the opinion that being angry at the hackers is like raging at the wind, hackers hack, and they’ll always be there, so if you want your console or service to remain secure, you secure it, you don’t expend time trying to catch the wind.

There’s certainly truth to that, and it’s clear that Sony need to tighten up all areas of their security, but that analogy is only an analogy, and hackers aren’t a force of nature, they are people, who just in front of the Easter holiday, have taken the decision to launch a crippling attack against a service millions of people were doubtlessly looking forward to using.

That’s shitty behaviour which deserves to be condemned, and for all the mis-steps made by Sony, (that Pat has chosen to shine a lighthouse strength spot light on), it’s hard not to feel disappointment that through that entire article, Pat couldn’t find a paragraph to properly condemn the people who have actually taken the decision to cause this damage in the first place.

It’s an incredibly one-sided article and many of the valid points raised within it, are going to be lost due to the bias tone which pervades it. Whilst Pat may well have anticipated a backlash from the sizeable PS3 community who visit this site, the complete lack of balance contained within it has assured that those who wish to dismiss it outright, can do so with very little effort indeed, and that’s a shame in itself.

the psn is down because of hackers, not necessarily anonymous… they need to get lives and start living them… the only victims here are psn users, through no fault of sony, their security is not inferior, all security can be breached… if it stops wankers getting my card details then good on them… i will forever hate hackers that use their intelligence for the bad things in cyberworld…

Want to express your opinions where they count the most. Go to anons blogspot ‘opsony’, or go to anons homefront at anonnews.org. You can also exact revenge on their IRC channal, or go to 4chan. Please post obscene pics or URLs, remember ‘we do not forget, we do not forget, we are leion’. GAMERS UNITE!

Simply Put, you have a right to mad at Both, Anonymous and Sony!

This reminds me of the Katrina Disaster. The US Gov’t had long stated that it was SUPERIOR in all aspects, and could Respond IMMEDIATELY to any threat, and fix it IMMEDIATELY!

When put to the test, with Katrina, the Gov’t showed it was all talk, and could no more secure the disaster then it could win a war over Religion and Oil!

So, Sony, sold me on a LINE! Trust in me, Sony said, You KNOW that your INFORMATION is SAFE and SOUND, and that the SERVICE will always be the most secure!

As we can now see, it was nothing more then TALK, with SONY hoping that NO one ever put them to the TEST!

The TEST has been PUT FORTH, and their Security was no more then TALK, something that is very easy to cross.

We, who bought the PS3 and participate in the PSN, were told that all we do and provide is secure, and to TRUST Sony!

So yes, we have a right to be mad at ANONYMOUS, but we also have just as much right to be mad at SONY! For stating something UNTRUE and when put to the TEST, that statement SONY made was FALSE, even though WE TRUSTED SONY!

@122, Ok then, name 5 active members other than SOMI (who wants Nintendo & it’s employess to die for some reason) who goes into every Nintendo or MS post & trolls. The biggest troll on this site would be you, fucking hypocrite.

@123, I’m in the exact same boat as you, I’ve been called a Sony fan, & there’s some truth to it, not because of the logo on the product but because of the actual product they make, it works exactly how I want it to, my only criticisms are the lack of power (as to be expected in an aging machine) & the comparatively weak online interface-I would love to see Sony adopt Steam for a majority of the PS4′s online features like SteamPlay, voice chat rooms & a well supported online store, well I would like any of the big 3 to do so but Sony seems like the only one who would be up for it, still more likely that we’ll see a Steam-box (Custom PC dedicated to Steam) under our TVs than the PS4 integrating it.

They’re not using the mask because of its historical relevance. They’re using it because it appeared in some pretentious pseudo-intellectual comic book and movie about “fighting” the man.

It’s hilarious how this our campaign has gotten more attention and support than anything they’ve ever done before. Any campaigns by this particular group – including such ridiculous targets as the Egyptian government – have gone completely ignored.

The most hilarious offender is how Youtube recently took down their previous videos, most likely at Sony’s request, and Anon instantly proceeded to threaten to take them on, for denying them “freedom of speech”. Looks like that campaign didn’t last long, based on this video…

What a bunch of laughable idiots.

@ 122 Thank you. I thought I would be the only one thinking that way. Again your comment is simply right! Like it!!

Nicely put Robo_1, maybe you should hand out some of those chill pills your mainlining though. It’s getting a bit tense round here! *tightens tin foil hat*

@94 Well, if someone could sue a group of hackers affiliated with anonymous for BIG numbers, putting on them all the blame for the damage caused by the collectivity, I may join them in the suing.

@100 I quote every character, punctuation and space.

@104 How come GeoHot actions aren’t considered ILLEGAL? He dabbled with patented technology and released the means to circumvert it. That’s at least copyright infringment, plus all the DMCA stuff.
Sony had all the rights in the fucking world to sue the shit out of Hotz.

“Sony sued GeoHot to show the world what happens when you F*** with them.

Now Anonymous is showing the world what happens when you F*** with them”

First case: you get an injunction to pay 10.000 dollars every time they find an illegal software running on PS3

Secon case: people are damaged from their senseless actions.

@107
“How about Patrick you report that Sony has decided to rebuild the full PSN NETWORK From the ground up, and include that if it wasn’t for the HACKERS that started this all the PSN USERS would have service now.”
Wow, that’s something I didn’t know. Yeah I’m lazy and didn’t search more about this but c’mon, it’s Easter!

@116 My exact thought.

lol,this kids don’t know what mistakes are they doing,they’re not getting sony down,they’re makin’ people angry,if anyone cursed them before me,count me in please.

@130

Hey it’s Easter Sunday, so I’m kicking back with a pile of Easter eggs and season three of The Thick Of It. Mr Tucker is doing all the blood vessel popping I need this morning. lol

A pretentious pseudo intellectual comic book?! Fuck off. Seriously.

Great article which only cements what I’ve been saying for years, really. Hate to say I told you so etc.

@99 They’d still be achieving absolutely nothing. No matter how much cock Geohot is forced to service in prison, they still aren’t left with any kind of victory.

That’s the problem.

Sony could use it to profile themselves and go “We’re prepared to face this, and not let it hamper our operations. There are naive punks out there who want to play with our stuff, but we’re professionals, and we are perfectly capable of remaning one step ahead of the homebrew community”.

Instead of calling a lawyer and going “Waaaah, the dude with the puffy hair broke our entire company, let’s pretend he has billions to give us”.

It’s about damage control. You try to make a situation work for you, instead of making it worse. It’s not a question of poetic justice, revenge or legal rights, it’s a question of making a problem as small as it possibly can be.

@135, fantastic comment. I salute you and agree with everything you said here.

Yeah. Good comment.

Ball has been dropped. (yet again)

You idiots! its a God send the psn is down. Do you all forget what time of year it is?? EASTER!! the psn went down just before good friday. Good friday and saturday should be a day of prayer and church, reflection , for all christians, not partying or playing games!! You all must be either jews or atheists,muslims. Still show some respect to your christian brothers, and put up with the down time. For all u christians moaning , SHAME on you. Happy easter!! go church and spend time with the family , not gaming..

Easter has nothing at all do with Christianity, like every other Christian holiday, it’s been shoehorned in from another belief. Christianity has no base of it’s own, like English, it’s come from a bit of everybody else.

I have no idea how Christianity has became a mainstream religion, it’s got more loopholes than every other religion combined & the bible has constantly been changed since it’s creation, now it no longer has any resemblance to what it once was.

Sorry if this offends but stop your preaching.

@138 I’m going to pretend I didn’t read that.

@123 @135 Well said, chaps.

What do you mean Easter has nothing to do with Christianity?

Isn’t it when our good lord Jesus Cadbury died on a hot cross bun and was resurrected as the Easter bunny?

@141, LOL

@123 Well said.

Wow, complete morons. Kuwabara, easter does not have anything to do with christianity its a hallmark holiday. That is where their right, now where their wrong is that in christianity this day is observed as resurrection Sunday not easter. A lot of Mainstream churches use easters theme like catholism to get more people into the church. But in christianity we observe the resurection not the bunny. Get YOUR facts straight, most americans live in a culturally stripped society and we are forced/raised into the beliefs of our goverment as opposed to our faith(s).

So your pointless banters trying to point out flawed logic in christian society is just plain banter. Trying to make yourself look smart because you think you can put 2 and 2 together. Stop with this needless hate towards christians. Your all coming off as hypocrites before you come off proving any point.

And, I don’t have anything to. Say further on the psn behalf. A lot of you are just talking like complete trolls. How you guys feel maintenance to a server is problematic is beyond logic. I guess the two weeks maintenance my job is at fault because they shut the place. Down to fix the place. Please grow up, everything still works your games your netflix hulu and other apps. You just can’t use the storeor multiplayer. Your receiving half of a free service and still act like your paying for it. Let the people work

One question (without reading all previous 144 comments)…

Couldn’t Sony have turned PSN off for maintenance starting Monday and through the workweek?

Just a shame they had to do it over an extended holiday weekend when people are more likely to be playing online with friends/family (especially with two new games that have heavy emphasis on multiplayer).

I wasn’t trying to make myself look smart, I’m just tired of Christians making every topic religious.

Last time I checked the people who have started these topics on vg were not christian. Everytime the convos start it started from a. Christian hater. Even when spider originally started a thread he started it to try and calm the hate and give an open eye that not all christians are as hypocritical as A LOT of people on this site tend to think and believe.

The amount of mocking that goes on this site is just sickening. Never do I see a topic blasting a atheist started by a. Christian or saying all gays are going to hell. The way a lot of you try to make us out to be is annoying and aggrevating.

And, the fact that a lot of you like to tell us what we believe is hilarious. Did I come on here saying yes easter belongs to us? NO! I said we observe the resurrection of christ. if you guys are so smart then you’d understand the differrences between cultral and religious belief. Easter is cultural it is something the masses observe in a traditional manor to promote happiness to those outside and within a faith. It is a holiday of good will and intentions.

Resurrection Sunday would be a religious practice. Where people with in the faith can observe their beliefs free of other peoples thoughts and belief. Is it against our belief to celebrate a holiday such as easter? No! Because easter was again past tense was a day given to pagan belief. Now it is a day given to neutrality, are we worshipping pagan gods and tearing our clothes of for sex? No we are letting our children have fun and a choice. Free will to explore what they want to believe while giving them some grounding in their parents belief.

I wish a lot of you would stop acting like you are fully aware of the faith when you don’t even practice it

@138, whats next??? Nostradamus rubbing his glass ball, and saw that Sony went down because of hackers???? give me a break…..

@#lexph3re – what are you the victim of again?

@147, No one I’ve seen started insulting Christians out of nowhere, it’s normally related from some tool trying to spread the word. I’ve heard the word spread so many times, if I wanted to hear more about it, I would have done something about it by now.
My point is, I go onto this site to read gaming related news, not go to church, don’t take anything anybody says against your religion personally, just people venting anger.
I do understand Christian values & such, I grew up attending a school called St. Thomas Moore where the principal was called Sister Mary. Most of the nicest people that I’ve met are religious but I personally never thought it made sense, even as a child.
Lastly, If you are truly faithful, you wouldn’t let those who disagree distract you from your beliefs.