Anonymous Puts Sony’s Employees In Their Sights

Anonymous, the hacker group behind many DDoS attacks, has made their actions against Sony even more personal by targeting employees and their families in their newest attack. Sony Recon, a subgroup of Anonymous, has begun to pull all information on Sony employees, the judge reigning over Sony’s current lawsuit against several PS3 code breakers, and the lawyers and their families who are working for Sony. In doing so, Anonymous hopes to find incriminating information about the individuals.

Even though most of this knowledge is public record, the intrusion into the personal lives of the aforementioned parties is deeply felt by all members besieged in this attack. The website Next-Gen.biz has reported the following:

“Among those targets is Robert S. Wiesenthal, a group executive at Sony Corp. His marital status, age, address, education and family history have all been discovered and shared among the group, which is also targeting Howard Stringer, chairman, president and CEO of Sony Corp. One user asked on IRC: “No one found ANY info on Stringer’s kids?”

Up until now, I have been an advocate for the freedom of information, and have given kudos to some of Anonymous’ attacks against corrupt companies and officials. But when a group targets innocent children I have to shake my head in disgust and ask why they would choose to do so.

If you haven’t been in the loop for the past few months about what has been going on with this lawsuit, allow me to explain. Sony has filed against the PS3 hackers Geohot and Graf_Chokolo.

The lawsuit was filed by Sony against these two for “Jailbreaking” their PS3 systems, which they personally owned. While I do not condone the use of pirated software or downloading free games and software off the internet, I don’t think that Sony should be able to bring a lawsuit against anyone who does “Jailbreak” their hardware, as they (the purchaser) own it.

Sony Recon has stated time and time again that it is not seeking this information to personally attack those responsible but rather they are “gathering information that is already publicly available, in the hope of finding something incriminating to help in the lawsuit. Anonymous is against violence or threatening/attacking people. He says nothing illegal is being done.”

As to how the information gathered will help “break the case” is still debatable. Apparently some of Anonymous’ group members feel the same way as it has been reported that the original group has become divided on the subject. As was reported on Destructoid, “a splinter group, known as Backtrace, is threatening to release personal details of its members due to them becoming “arrogant sociopaths.”

How this will all pan out is anyone’s guess. I for one would like to be able to play my PS3 games online without interrupted service as I’m sure many others feel the same. That being said, the whole thing is very interesting and kind of exciting to watch. I for one can’t wait to see how it all turns out as it is certainly heating up.