73w ago - Despite some members being arrested a few months back, Internet hacking group Anonymous have now sent Sony a message in the form of a video (below) regarding the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill.

This comes just a week after reports of a SOPA-style court order for India's ISPs to block some of the world's largest file-sharing sites including BitTorrent, Megaupload and more.

Shortly following, GoDaddy announced their support for SOPA resulting in thousands of domain owners prompting to leave the registrar, including giant networks such as Wikipedia and Cheezeburger which consists of over 1000 domains alone.

To deal with the large volume of domain transfers, GoDaddy began blocking (and in some cases delaying)...

102w ago - Today the NY Times (linked above) and Policia.es are reporting that Spanish Police have detained three Anonymous members in connection with the recent PSN cyberattacks with 32 more arrested in Turkey.

To quote from the Times: "The Spanish police said Friday that they had apprehended three men suspected of computer hacking in connection with recent cyberattacks on Sony's PlayStation Network as well as corporate and government Web sites around the world.

The National Police identified the three as the local leadership of the shadowy international network of computer hackers known as Anonymous, which has claimed responsibility for a wide variety of attacks.

Anonymous is made up of people from various countries organized into cells that share common goals, the police said, with activists operating anonymously but in a coordinated fashion.

One of the three "hacktivists," a 31-year-old Spaniard, was detained in the southern city of Almeria sometime after May 18, the police said. He had a computer server in his apartment in the northern port...

107w ago - Today Sony's Senior Director of Corporate Communications & Social Media Patrick Seybold has posted an update on their response to the U.S. House of Representatives via the PlayStation Blog.

To quote: Today, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing in Washington, DC on The Threat of Data Theft to American Consumers.

Kazuo Hirai, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sony Computer Entertainment America, submitted written answers to questions posed by the subcommittee about the large-scale, criminal cyber-attack we have experienced. We wanted to share those answers with you (click here).

In summary, we told the subcommittee that in dealing with this cyber attack we followed four key principles:

1. Act with care and caution.
2. Provide relevant information to the public when it has been verified.
3. Take responsibility for our obligations to our customers.
4. Work with law enforcement authorities.

We also informed the subcommittee of the following:

• Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal...

109w ago - Today SCEE Blog Manager James Gallagher alongside Senior Director Patrick Seybold via the US Blog have posted update details on the PSN service outages, stating outside attacks may be a possible cause.

To quote: I know you are waiting for additional information on when PlayStation Network and Qriocity services will be online. Unfortunately, I don't have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time.

As we previously noted, this is a time intensive process and we're working to get them back online quickly. We'll keep you updated with information as it becomes available. We once again thank you for your patience.

We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online.

Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security.

We thank you for your patience to date and ask for a little more while we move towards completion of this project. We will continue to give you updates as they...

111w ago - Update #2: Anonymous have now issued another Press Release essentially stating that they plan to cease the attacks on Sony but intend to pursue other ways of getting Sony's attention.

Update: GameSpot.com reports that Sony has now stated the following to their PSN customers regarding the recent attacks, to quote: "If this is indeed caused by such [an] act, we want to once again thank our customers who have borne the brunt of the attack through interrupted service. Our engineers are working to restore and maintain the services, and we appreciate our customers' continued support."

As a follow-up to our previous article, today PlayStation LifeStyle (linked above) interviewed the Anonymous hacking group that has been attacking Sony who states the worst is yet to come, while KickArss.com has shared a fix for those experiencing issues with PSN.

From the PSL interview: "So far, all Sony has seen...