PSN Congressional Hearing: Sony Claims Anonymous Involvement, Congress Calls Sony's Response “Half-Hearted”

Posted 05/04/2011 at 6:12pm | by Nathan Grayson

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“We are Legion.” So said a file – titled “Anonymous,” naturally – that Sony allegedly discovered while combing through the smoldering wreckage of its hacked-to-pieces online infrastructure. Sony revealed that juicy bit of evidence in response to a Congressional hearing over data breaches, which – in itself – was the closest thing to a live evisceration you'll ever see broadcasted on CSPAN.

"In Sony’s case, company officials first revealed information about the data breach on their blog. That’s right. A blog. I hate to pile on, but—in essence—Sony put the burden on consumers to 'search' for information, instead of accepting the burden of notifying them. If I have anything to do with it, that kind of half-hearted, half-baked response is not going to fly in the future,” said Rep. Mary Bono Mack, chair of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade (via IndustryGamers).

"Yet for me, the single most important question is simply this: Why weren’t Sony’s customers notified sooner of the cyberattack? I fundamentally believe that all consumers have a right to know when their personal information has been compromised, and Sony - as well as all other companies—have an overriding responsibility to alert them... immediately."

As for the big, sloppy fingerprint allegedly left behind by Anonymous, Sony claimed it was planted on a Sony Online Entertainment server. Anonymous, of course, previously waged war on PSN via crippling DDoS attacks as a show of support for Geohot. The notorious hivemind halted its advance, however, when it realized customers were also suffering from its brand of vigilante justice. Recently, it explicitly denied any involvement with the ApocalyPSN. Obviously, Sony's file – if it's even the real deal – suggests otherwise.

But that's the problem. Is it real? Or did some villainous hacker drop the smoking gun in Anonymous' hand and make a break for it? This most recent piece of evidence doesn't really match up with Anonymous' previous actions, but the manipulative mass has more splinter groups than Facebook has groups dedicated to the TMNT character Splinter. So who knows? We don't expect we'll ever truly get to the bottom of this, but we can dream, can't we?