In the midst of an apparent civil war, the online hacking collective, Anonymous, has issued yet another public statement denying responsibility for a damaging hack of Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) and claiming that Sony is trying to shift blame for “internal problems” onto Anonymous.
The audio statement, published Monday on Anonops.blogspot.org, leaves open the possibility that individuals associated with Anonymous may have carried out the attack, which exposed personal and financial information on upwards of 100 million Sony customer, but says the attack was not orchestrated by Anonymous.
“While it could be the case other Anons have acted by themselves, Anonops was not related to this incident and does not take responsibility for whatever has happened,” the statement reads.
Anonymous points the finger back at Sony executives for the breach. “A more likely explanation is that Sony is taking advantage of Anonymous previous ill will toward the company to distract users from the fact that the outage is actually an internal problem with the company’s servers,” the group said.
The attention given to Anonymous only supports the group’s efforts by spreading word about it to the uninitiated, the continues, before concluding with “you should have expected us” – a seemingly damning variation of its ususal “expect us” sign off that would suggest the group did have something to do with the hack.
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The message, read by a speech simulation program over heavy metal music, is just the latest denial by the group, which had launched a high profile attack against Sony, dubbed #OpSony, in the weeks leading up to the mid April breach of PlayStation Network (PSN) as well as Station.com, two massive online gaming networks that Sony operates. On May 5, the group had published a letter denying involvement in the hack and claiming that it is not interested in stealing credit card numbers.
Sony executives have pointed the finger at Anonymous in public testimony about the breach. Kazuo Hirai, chairman of the board of Sony Computer Entertainment America, wrote a letter to the U.S. House Commerce Committee last week explaining the company’s response to the breach and to distributed denial of service attacks leveled at it, allegedly by Anonymous. Hirai said a file titled “Anonymous” containing the message “we are legion” was left behind after the hack.
Sony’s PlayStation Network remains offline following the attack, with new reports suggesting the popular gaming network may remain offline until the end of the month, while Sony staff ensure that the network is completely secure and user data safe before restoring services.
