Third Attack Planned Against Sony Playstation Network

CNET reports that a third attack has been planned against Sony. According to an Internet Relay Chat user frequenting a channel used by hackers, the attack is planned for this weekend. Their plan is to publicize information whole or in part that was copied from Sony’s servers during a previous intrusion.

Should the planned attack succeed, it would be the latest blow in a series of devastating security breaches of Sony’s servers over the past month. The failure of Sony’s server security has ignited investigations by the FBI, the Department of Justice, Congress, and the New York State Attorney General, a well as data security and privacy authorities in the U.K., Canada, and Taiwan.

Several weeks ago, Anonymous targeted a number of Sony sites with their “patented” distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. Their members feel that Sony acted unfairly against hacker George Hotz. Later, another attack resulted in personal customer information being exposed for millions of Sony customers. This forced Sony to shut down PSN, Qriocity, and Sony Online and they are still working to bring theses services back online.

Sony doesn’t know who orchestrated this last “highly sophisticated, planned” attack, but are hinting around that it may have been Anonymous. The group denies any involvement in the breach, though. They’ve issued a statement denying it was involved: “While we are a distributed and decentralized group, our ‘leadership’ does not condone credit card theft,” the statement said.

via CNET News