Internet vigilante group Anonymous denied involvement on Thursday in the theft of personal information from over 100 million Sony PlayStation and Online Entertainment network accounts.Sony, in a letter to a US congressional committee released Wednesday, said hackers had planted a file named “Anonymous” on the servers of the Sony Online Entertainment network at around the time members of the group carried out denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Sony servers.
The Japanese electronics company stopped short of directly accusing Anonymous of carrying out the data theft but said it bore some responsibility. In a typical DDoS attack, a large number of computers are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, overwhelming its servers, slowing service or knocking it offline completely.
Anonymous, which carried out similar attacks last year against US companies which withdrew services to WikiLeaks, had vowed retribution against Sony for taking legal action against hackers who cracked PlayStation 3 (PS3) defenses to change console operating software.
Personal information such as the user names, passwords, addresses and birth dates of more than 100 million accounts may have been compromised by hackers and the intruders may also have made off with credit and debit card data. Anonymous, in its statement, said “while we are a distributed and decentralized group, our ‘leadership’ does not condone credit card theft.
The PlayStation Network, which has been temporarily shut down by Sony, connects PS3 consoles to online games, films and more. Players are still able to take part in games offline on consoles, but have lost the ability to challenge others on the Internet.
