Sony in a statement given to the Congressional hearing on the PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment hacks implicated Anonymous in the attack. Consumer Product head Kaz Hirai claimed that a file had been deliberately left behind in the attack on SOE that was named “Anonymous” and had the activist hacker coalition’s slogan “We are Legion” inside. While not directly accusing Anonymous, it made a link back to the earlier protest campaign and implied strongly that Anonymous was to blame.
The group had already denied any involvement in the latest breach. It rarely if ever denies involvement in attacks it launches and is often first to claim involvement.
As part of the statement, Sony went into greater detail about what happened, reiterating that unusual activity started on April 19 when systems began rebooting on their own. The company discovered a day later that there had been a “transfer of data” outside of the servers, Hirai said. Sony didn’t contact the FBI until April 22 but also didn’t know the scope at the time.
Customers weren’t notified of a hack until six days later because getting the right data involved a “meticulous” process, according to the executive. It wasn’t until April 23 that Sony found there were “very sophisticated” techniques used to get in but hide the hack.
Investigators could confirm that all 77 million PSN accounts had been compromised, but they still couldn’t tell if credit card information had been obtained. Credit card firms hadn’t reported unusually common fraud, however. Despite attempting to tie Anonymous to the attack, it admitted it hadn’t identified a suspect.
The statement reiterated that it had hoped to assuage gamers effected by the hack with a free service giveaway as soon as PSN comes back. As of Wednesday afternoon, the PSN service hadn’t been restored.
