The debate over whether online activist group Anonymous was behind the Sony PlayStation hack continued Friday, with a group spokesman taking to the op-ed pages of The Guardian to deny any wrongdoing, while sources told the Financial Times that Anonymous members are probably behind the attack.
Sony's PlayStation Network has been offline since April 20 thanks to a sophisticated cyber attack. Earlier this week, Sony told members of Congress that one of its Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) servers contained a file called "Anonymous" with the words "We Are Legion," the group's tagline. In response, Anonymous said it has never engaged in credit card theft, and said that many of its corporate adversaries engage in activities far more ethically suspect than Anonymous.
Barrett Brown, a sometimes spokesman for Anonymous, reiterated those thoughts in his Friday op-ed. "The circumstances of this incident are highly suspicious," he wrote.
It wouldn't be very smart for members of Anonymous to put their calling cards on the Sony servers, so "any investigation into the crime in question must take into account the natural question of who might benefit from such an act—in other words, a party or parties who would have an interest in smearing Anonymous," he wrote.
Two veteran Anonymous members, however, tell the Financial Times that recent online activity suggests that Anonymous might be responsible for the attack after all. One member said Anonymous members discussed technical details of a Sony PlayStation network vulnerability in a chatroom shortly before the hack.
"The hacker that did this was supporting OpSony's movements," the Anonymous activist told the FT, referring to Anonymous's recent campaign against Sony for its prosecution of PS3 hackers.
Last month, Anonymous attacked Sony-branded Web sites to protest Sony's lawsuits. An Anonymous offshoot known as "SonyRecon" also targeted individual Sony employees.
The FT's second source pointed out that the splintered nature of Anonymous makes it possible that one member conducted the attack even if other members did not support it or know about it.
"If you say you are Anonymous, and do something as Anonymous, then Anonymous did it," the hacker said.
Brown shifted his focus to companies that he said routinely lie and distort facts to bring down their enemies. "The FBI spent two decades operating a programme called COINTELPRO, by which agents would infiltrate 'dangerous' groups, such as those advocating civil rights, and then promote violence by its members in order to discredit their cause in the eyes of the public and justify police crackdowns," he wrote.
Brown acknowledged that Anonymous participates in cyber attacks, but said the group "does so against dictatorships and corrupt institutions that engage in corruption alongside the state—and when we do, the FBI raids the homes of our alleged participants."
In January, the FBI said it executed more than 40 search warrants throughout the U.S. related to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against companies that withdrew their support for WikiLeaks. British police also arrested five Anonymous members for their alleged involvement in those DDoS attacks.
Hacking Sony's network and stealing credit card information, however is a "major crime entirely different from the campaigns of civil disobedience for which we are rightfully known," Brown said. "Sony has thus managed to shift attention away from its own failure to protect client data, while federal agencies have been diverted into a pursuit of us, this time for a massive theft rather than popular acts of revolt."
In its letter to Congress, Sony said it had not yet identified who hacked into its systems.