"Congratulations! You are now receiving the attention of Anonymous," Anonymous wrote in an open letter on its Web site. "Your recent legal actions against fellow Internet citizens, GeoHot and Graf_Chokolo have been deemed an unforgivable offense against free speech and Internet freedom, primary sources of free lulz (and you know how we feel about lulz.)."
At the beginning of the year Sony sued George "GeoHot" Hotz, 23, and Alexander "graf_chokolo" Egorenkov for tinkering with the PlayStation 3 and publishing online their exploits.
Sony sued Hotz in January for exposing the root key to a PS3, allowing users to develop and play homebrew games. His case has been well-documented, partly due to Hotz' appearances on talk shows and homemade anti-Sony rap videos posted on YouTube. Unphased by consumer anger, Sony recently received permission to subpoena PayPal for Hotz' records.
Meanwhile in late February, German police raided the home of Egorenkov, who is best known for reverse-engineering the PS3 and researching security loopholes in the console. Sony later sued Egorenkov for one million euros ($1.4 million) for publishing the findings of his research, known as the "Hypervisor Bible," online.
According to Anonymous' Twitter feed, the Sony Pictures U.K. site was taken down on Saturday. The site was running as of Monday morning eastern time. However the European PlayStation site has stopped responding.
On Friday, following the tradition of previous attacks, Anonymous tweeted a warning about "#OpSony."
Anonymous is a coalition of hackers operating under the name "Operation Payback." It typically uses distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to deface the Web sites of companies against rights-free content such as LimeWire and WikiLeaks; victims include Broadcast Music International, former HBGary CEO Aaron Barr, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, the Recording Industry Association of America, the U.S. Copyright Office, and the Motion Picture Association of America.
Last week Anonymous hinted that Warner Bros. may be next for its involvement in a trillion-dollar lawsuit against LimeWire. @OfficialAnonOps tweeted, "#Anonymous are going to attack #WarnerBros. www.warnerbrosrecords.com will be taken down soon. More info: http://bit.ly/WBRAnon | #OpPayback."
For more, see PCMag's analysis of how the 'Anonymous' Web movement came into being.