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Hacking for consumer rights.

furie

furie

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Sony is just about to enter a month with their entire Playstation Network down after they were hacked and customer details were stolen.

It's looking more and more likely this was done by the hacking group "Anonymous" (a splinter of them anyway, they're not really an organisation).

It all stems from Sony suing "Geohotz" for breaking the encryption on the PS3 which allows people to run pirated software and "homebrew" on the PS3.

Allegedly, the breaking of the encryption was because Sony evilly took away to option of running Linux on the PS3 with a firmware upgrade.

The response has been a few weeks of denial of service attacks followed then by this intrusion into the Playstation Network which has screwed Sony.

The PSN being down is a little like not being able to access the data network on your iPhone or something. You can still make calls and use things that are already installed, but anything that relies on the data network (including buying new stuff) is completely dead.

Do you think that this is a useful as "consumer rights terrorism"? Do you support such attacks on huge corporations to show them that you can't keep crapping on the little guy? Will we get a bigger, better, brighter future by being able to show these faceless behemoths that we won't put up with their crap? Or (like me) is it better to just simply let the consumer vote with their wallets? If you fall out of favour, then people simply wont buy from you.
 
Its not Anonymous. Well, from what I gathered its not the standard Anonymous but a collection of anons that seperated them selves. Rouge if you prefer (no not the one fron xmen, they ain't hot)

Again, from the news I've gathered the geohot and the details being stolen are two seperate events. In my opinion the original DDOS Attack that took the network down was related to geohot and anonymous just being angry but the subsiquent attack and security breach are piggybacked by a seperate group who were doing it purely for malicious intent. You don't kidnap your own men and hold them for ransom do you?

Professional Jared off Screwattack has been talking about this alot on Hard News and Sidescrollers so I'd try hunt that down if you don't alreasy watch them.

In the end I think that this psn stuff is an event that some one has taken advantage off and completely ruined its original purpose and I do hope sony can recover from it.
 
Veteran Anonymous Member said:
“The hacker that did this was supporting OpSony’s movements,” the Anonymous activist told the FT
Click to expand...
Source:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d0a21040-7800 ... z1LblR9y3J

The issue is that if you're a none centralised bunch of hackers, then anyone can do anything in your name. It does look in this case though that a few members know who did it and that it was done as "an extreme" part of OpSony or something.

I don't condone it, but I think Sony are stupid for trying to so publicly take on a group of world renowned hackers. They tried to make a big deal out of it all, and have paid the price. Though the chances are the hackers will be caught and spend a lot of time picking up soap.
 
Thing is, with anonymous they're not as co-ordinated as you think. While some people claim to be doing it as part of anonymous it's not really them of you get what I mean. I'm a little nerd and I like watching what they do but they are really the most unco-ordinated group ever. It's really hard to get them to all agree on one thing then actually do it cause they're all a bunch of dicks.

I do agree that this was not really the way to do it though.
 
Not sure if i support this approach with companies as its the end user that suffers, the guys that they are allegedly helping us are making us feel threatened.

However I am at the end of the day the end user who has paid for the privelidge of using their machine and so if i decide i wish to use linux as my O/S on the ps3, i should have that option. If i decide that i wish to program homebrewed software, i again should be able to! ITS MY PIECE OF HARDWARE!
 
The thing is...

If you want to use Linux, then you can on the older models. There was nothing forcing a Linux PS3 to be upgraded to Firmware that didn't allow it. If you're running Linux, then chances are you don't want to keep updating firmware anyway as it doesn't add anything.

Okay, when your PS3 dies, you can't buy a new PS3 that lets you do that, but that's a new PS3. I'd love to be able to play PS2 games on my new slim but can't. However, it was a huge amount cheaper than my "phat" so I'm not too fussed about losing the functionality as it has made the console more affordable.

The homebrew thing is a real grey area though. Sony are quite clear when you buy the machine; they do not want you to be able to write home brew. They put in place devices to stop it. Right or wrong, it's clear when you buy the machine. You buy a games console, so it's not like they're actually ripping you off by selling you a software development platform and stopping you.

Of course, everyone hides behind homebrew, but how many people actually, seriously want to code homebrew and are rather just using it as an excuse to pirate? Seriously, in real numbers, how many want it for serious use, and how many to get free stuff?

People who are that serious can surely find a way to get a dev kit and produce work properly. There have been people who have done it and made money out of it from the PSN (Linger in Shadows was the first).

There's not really any precedent though prior to this in terms of "what I should be allowed to do once I've bought my equipment". If you buy a car, then you you should be allowed to put whatever tyres you want on it, or oil filter, or body kit, or stereo or whatever.

For electronic devices is it quite the same? It's still unclear waters (though the law is actually pretty clear about it and backs the equipment manufacturers). I'd like to see real, serious evidence that home brew is so important it's worth opening up security and piracy on a games machine to make it a worthwhile risk to the manufacturer to allow.
 
I agree with the hacking group's motivations but for the most part it has hurt end users more than it has hurt Sony. It did damage Sony's good name, sure, but it also resulted in metric tons of stolen data and downtime for millions of PSN users.
 
I'm a bit annoyed about it all. I just bought Brink which is primerily an online game but I can't connect online because the network is down.

Anonymous don't have a leader so they can always say 'we didn't do it'. Were there no other options of getting revenge besides annoying PS3 users?
 
Nintendo had a minor hack last week, but just got this through off Codemasters:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Important information regarding your account
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear valued Codemasters customer,

On Friday 3rd June, unauthorised entry was gained to our Codemasters.com
website. As soon as the intrusion was detected, we immediately took
codemasters.com and associated web services offline in order to prevent
any further intrusion.

During the days since the attack we have conducted a thorough
investigation in order to ascertain the extent and scope of the breach
and have regrettably discovered that the intruder was able to gain
access to the following:

Codemasters.com website

Access to the Codemasters corporate website and sub-domains.

DiRT 3 VIP code redemption page

Access to the DiRT 3 VIP code redemption page.

The Codemasters EStore

We believe the following have been compromised: Customer names and
addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, encrypted passwords and
order history. Please note that no personal payment information was
stored with Codemasters as we use external payment providers, meaning
your payment details were not at risk from this intrusion.

Codemasters CodeM database

Members' names, usernames, screen names, email addresses, date of birth,
encrypted passwords, newsletter preferences, any biographies entered by
users, details of last site activity, IP addresses and Xbox Live
Gamertags are all believed to have been compromised.

Whilst we do not have confirmation that any of this data was actually
downloaded onto an external device, we have to assume that, as access
was gained, all of these details were compromised and/or stolen.

The Codemasters.com website will remain offline for the foreseeable
future with all Codemasters.com traffic re-directed to the Codemasters
Facebook page instead. A new website will launch later in the year.

Advice

For your security, in the first instance we advise you to change any
passwords you have associated with other Codemasters accounts. If you
use the same login information for other sites, you should change that
information too. Furthermore, be extra cautious of potential scams, via
email, phone, or post that ask you for personal or sensitive
information. Please note that Codemasters will never ask you for any
payment data such as credit card numbers or bank account details, nor
will Codemasters ask you for passwords or other personal identifying
data. Be aware too of fraudulent emails that may outwardly appear to be
from Codemasters with links inviting you to visit websites. The safest
way to visit your favourite websites is always by typing in the address
manually into the address bar of your browser.

Unfortunately, Codemasters is the latest victim in on-going targeted
attacks against numerous game companies. We assure you that we are doing
everything within our legal means to track down the perpetrators and
take action to the full extent of the law.

We apologise for this incident and regret any inconvenience caused.

We are contacting all customers who may have been affected directly.

Should you have any concerns or wish to speak to a member of our
Customer Services team, please email them at
[email protected].

You have been sent this email as part of your Codemasters Code M
membership. If you have any questions or queries about this email or
your CodeM account, please email [email protected]. The Codemasters
Software Company Limited, registered in England (Company No. 2044132)
whose registered office is at Codemasters Campus, Southam, Warwickshire,
CV47 2DL, England. For more Privacy information, please read the
Codemasters Privacy Policy : http://www.codemasters.co.uk/privacy/
 
I kinda doubt it's Anonymous tbh. It just doesn't fit into what they do as a group...

And LOL. Who would want to bother hacking the Nintendo one. All the details of ten year olds and retards, SCORE!
 
Ben said:
Who would want to bother hacking the Nintendo one. All the details of ten year olds and retards, SCORE!
Click to expand...
You'd have the details of the ten year olds parents though. ;)

The retards... yeah... no point there...
 
And in one of those bizarre timing things, three Spanish people have just been arrested for the attack on PSN. They claim they're "leaders" in Anonymous.
 
But, the oxymoron there is that the whole POINT of Anonymous revolves around them NOT having leaders :p

I'd honestly say they're claiming to be a part of something they aren't really.
 
Club Nintendo in Europe are now down after Nintendo discovered something phishy on the site. Don't know if it's connected to the earlier intrusion or not.
 
All this hacking is so mainstream. I was into it before ARPANET. Come on people! some originality here!

*Shoves mouldy spaghetti-o's up vagina*
 
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