According to an interview by Arstechnica with Sony’s website hosting provider the attacks being conduced by Anonymous are just a “medium scale” attack and are a “annoyance”. So why the downtime? The hosting tech said that the attack was not overwhelming, and that each wave of “attacks” require the hosts to blacklist the offending IP addresses. The only reasons server really was going down is because the process “takes time” and “it’s not difficult”.
The tech furthermore said that the DDoS attacks where underwhelming, and no where near an unstoppable force. They plan to just wait out the attacks until Anonymous becomes “bored”.
Sony also has signed up with Prolexic, a DDoS mitigation service making the site being attacked much harder to take down, and apparently Anonymous has started to do some digging on this company as well.
IRC Logs of interest below:
KoraX: Prolexic will absorb anything that loic can throw at it,
innocent_whistler: didnt scientolodgy hire prolexic agenst us befor
KoraX: Thats why sony.com won’t go down
KoraX: innocent_whistler: indeed they did!
DrQuestion: I thought it was down
KoraX: naw, The auth site is down, other sites are down,
from what i can see sony.com is up
KoraX: And yes, its me
Ghoster^: yeah they wont go down, if they are under prolexic
Ghoster^: we have to plan for another course of action
Elitestate: sweet, what is it?
Ghoster^: thats why i said we have to plan.. haha
sprog: listen its going to take a lot to down sony, this is what
prolexic is paid for to protect companies against ddos attacks,
this foiled one of our plans beforesonyrecon335: I’ve messaged Journalists – it’s now just a waiting game.
Takai, could I ask that I now go after Prolexic employees,
as they’re standing in the way of our #Opsony’s current objective?Takai: Have at’er
WhiteRabbit: its pretty much game over….Plolexic can stop attack at 150GBps.
narc0synthesis: hahaha unless we r00t prolexic and fuck them up,
make them back off
What do you guys think, is Sony just bluffing or are the Anonymous attacks weak? Let us know via comments below.
04-09-2011
08:50 PM
Liars LMFAO
04-09-2011
09:14 PM
If this is true, Anonymous either needs to strengthen their attacks, or hit Sony where it hurts.
04-09-2011
09:36 PM
they already said this is just a warning shot to sony, and they are causing the sites to go down, after irc starts firing at the sites they do go down, and come back up when moved onto another target, lol
04-09-2011
10:56 PM
Looks like I'm gonna buy stock in Prolexic's parent corporation. Lord knows they're gonna get a lot of business from Anonymous' victims in the coming months. That IRC chat log just makes the perfect free advertisement!
Nice try guys...
04-09-2011
11:34 PM
SONY is just playing who is the most manly and they gonna get slap back just for that
04-10-2011
12:29 AM
Well its at least a entertaining game so far cant wait to see what anonymous can do. I think they've just been toying with $ony for now and looks like its going to get fun real soon. I want to see them take the store down without affecting gameplay if possible.
04-10-2011
12:40 AM
04-10-2011
02:10 AM
... Is this an ad for Prolexic?! If so, as good as it was, they forgot to say "curse you Prolexic!"
04-10-2011
03:02 AM
This won't bother sony non whatsoever! They are highly secured with Prolexic. Anonymous has no chance getting past that. If they do $ony can easily remove them quickly and painlessly. I feel anonymous isn't so powerful anymore
. I do wish they could take down the sony servers for as long as "they" can. But I doubt it's possible. 
04-10-2011
03:39 AM
Don't know about that picture, but I think the Names are mixed up. That big dude with all the weapons has to be Sony and the other dude is an Anonymous member watching our cyber sequrity.....
maybe Anonymous needs to hack a Backbone with OTS first and use that to see if Prolexic can protect Sony against 10Gbps attacks?
Not that I like to promote the attacks but I don't want to see Sony win over Anonymous.
------------------------------------------------
Sony: We Only Sell Licenses...
PS3: It only is allowed to do GameOS.....
04-10-2011
03:52 AM
Why is every story on the home page, not a blurb with a link to the full story, instead of the whole story?
Takes forever to load the page in a mobile device.
04-10-2011
04:07 AM
a big company like sony isn't going to admit that they're scared. anonymous also said that this is only the beginning. if somebody gets into their servers to mess it up and said that, why wouldn't sony worry about it?
04-10-2011
04:10 AM
This to me looks like everything is up to F-All.
But some may say; Big plans takes up big(alot of) time!
04-10-2011
04:31 AM
i love the pic
04-10-2011
05:02 AM
I popped into irc and the hive only had 70 odd connections. That is nothing, when they went after mastercard and visa they had 1000!
It's only a small group left that are doing the attacks, the rest got bored long ago.
04-10-2011
05:09 AM
Breaking into the servers (actual hacking) might bring down the server for a short time, but it would be less damaging than their last (technically legal) attack. With some companies, there would be documents and such that could be leaked, causing huge embarrassment, lawsuits, or even criminal charges...but at this point, what could they possibly leak that would make sony look worse? Unless I find out that the CEO has been eating babies for breakfast, I couldn't think any less of Sony than I already do...and that is generally the case for anyone who is paying attention.
As for Prolexic, it has a serious issue...it just blocks IP addresses. Since most Anonymous members are using various methods to hide their true IPs. When they block these IPs, the hackers just use different IPs, yet those IPs are still blocked. It is great for tightly targeted attacks done by small numbers of people...but it is downright useless for blocking thousands of hackers from all over the world that are attacking every server you have all at once.
That has a nasty effect in some cases...like Dorms. Often an entire Dorm with hundreds of students will share a single high speed internet connection with a single IP. So, one person there is a hacker, and the rest are blocked from the PSN.
The other issue is with dynamic IPs...many ISPs have "IP pools" that they assign randomly every time the connection is reset (and sometimes even while the connection is active). So, a hacker gets blocked, resets the cable modem, and repeats about 1,000 times...the next day those IPs are still blocked and they have all been reassigned to people who don't even know what an IP address is...and some of them have PS3s.
04-10-2011
05:55 AM
http://www.ps3hax.net/2011/04/ps3hax-going-full-width-full-news-posts-multilingual/
i dont like it either, so its best to rss it
http://www.ps3hax.net/rss
04-10-2011
07:07 AM
these attacks won't do any justice... sony will never allow ps3's to be jailbroken like the iphone...
the best way to win is to support geohot in the lawsuit & win a battle of freedom to do what we want with our devices... that's why iphone jailbreaking is legal today.
$ony want money...
the potential loss of money = jailbreak - because of backup managers.
04-10-2011
07:31 AM
Sony knows that jailbreaking can only help their bottom line; the increase in sales would b huge compared to any piracy-related losses (actually, most studies show that piracy works like free advertising; it increases sales).
This is all about control..Sony thinks that they own every PS3 ever made. If they were to admit that the devices people buy belong to the people who bought them, then that is like writing off over $15,000,000,000 worth of devices that they claim ownership of. It is utterly insane...and 100% logical from a corporate "mind"set.
04-10-2011
08:05 AM
the moment sony hired prolexic its game over..
prolexic is just too damn good
04-10-2011
08:37 AM
unfotunately the "attacks" do seem rather amateur, and i dont see sony changing their ways any time soon because of them...looks like its time anonymous stepped their game up a bit.
04-10-2011
09:00 AM
one week later : sony servers all running fine without a hitch after the "attacks" or even while its going on!
Top security experts in the industry > Anonymous
This just encourages sony to add even MORE security to their servers.
04-10-2011
09:33 AM
"It's an effective tool; Sony websites have been bouncing up and down all this week, and the job site sonycareers.com is currently down after being targeted by Anonymous. But it's not exactly the nuclear bomb of Internet weaponry, not unless Anonymous can marshal many more machines."
someone should port LOIC over to homebrew =) - ask the end user to help fight the battle! Think we could add in a few hundred of thousand loic machines?
04-10-2011
09:46 AM
Prolexic sounds like a male enhancement pill.
And I guess it kind of carries the analogy over.
Sony, feeling kinda small, hires prolexic. They feel better, bigger.. more manly! But their original problem still lies.
I believe more in the hackers and people of the free world than in the top IT and Security experts that Sony employs and hires. It's not right on either side to do these things though.
04-10-2011
09:58 AM
i figured they weren't doing sh it.
04-10-2011
10:01 AM
For small communities DDOS Attacks can be fatal - a big hosting company tho' I am pretty sure is able to handle them. What they say doesn't sound made up, the only time consuming task really is to blacklist these IPs. I do not want to make the attack less bad, at the same time I hope that any person involved in the attack will be legally charged (most likely impossible) since DDoS attacks are a serious subject - however I am at the same time glad if they are easily coped with.
04-10-2011
11:03 AM
Yes, DDoS attacks are simplistic in their nature but IP obfuscation is incredibly simple as well and Prolexic isn't working for free.
Blocking actual nefarious IP addresses can only get you so far before you start catching innocent IPs in the crossfire.
The attacks have been far more than an annoyance and the evidence for that is that Sony had to hire an outside company in order to defend against them. A very basic protection offered any and every hosting service is DDoS protection so hiring Prolexic tells us that for all of Sony's might the attacks were beyond their ability to defend against.
Every single day that Prolexic is at work it is costing Sony money. Can Prolexic easily tamp-down these simplistic attacks? Yes. But they sure as hell aren't doing it for free.
I'd classify that as a win for Anonymous as they are hurting Sony monetarily.
04-10-2011
11:19 AM
May sound a little far fetched, but do you not think annoymous are maybe just employees for prolexic?
Think about it, they using the existing buzz and hype to think, hmm Sony would need us if they was under attack, so they start a small scale attack to get Sony pissed off, then come forward and offer to protect Sony, kinda like olden day mafia, pay ppl to break windows, rob stores, then pretent to stop it happening once they get protection monies ahahah.
But as for the attacks, most ppl will just buy into the server maintence line, thinking it is to get rid of hackers and pirates and be glad Sony are doing something, even if the servers were taken down by annonymous in the beginning. So either way, Sony win and the trolls who cry they cannot get PSN on their CFW are the only one who will think bad of Sony.
Tbh if I was to go out tomorrow and walk around town all day asking what people think of Sony, 90% would not know wtf is going on in the jailbreak court case and any related cases. They would just think of the brand name and say they would not mind a Sony if they could afford the premium tag most the products have.
If I come on here though, 90% would cry since they either bricked their ps3 or no longer have PSN on CFW, so since they chose to have CFW, it is now Sonies fault they have no PSN or a brick lol, grow up and take responsibility for your actions, either play by Sonies rules or goto court with the thousand who are filing class action suit against Sony over linux, but since most ppl who claimed to use linux in that suit probly do not even know what it is, that is another story to lol about.
04-10-2011
11:20 AM
anonymous should just take psn down for a week or 2 when they start lossing money they might give in a little
04-10-2011
05:10 PM
KillerBug,
I would defo's agree with you on your statement...to extend from this, if Sony are implementing DDoS attack prevention tools/services then they have been hit very hard and the attacks affected a definite key part of their infrastructure (I state this as an employee working for a Corporate WAN company who deals with this type of scenario every so often).
As an assumption I bet Sony never had DDoS sniper tools/services in place on they WAN infrastructure and "Anonymous" picked out a small hole and completely hammered the F**k out of it and started to kill of the IP connectivity for their sister/daughter/third companies that use the Sony Network and in turn caused Sony to lose a lot of money (This is normally the main reason the company I work for would get harassed to correct as quickly as possible from their clients).
As KillerBug stated.
"Unless I find out that the CEO has been eating babies for breakfast,"
Its not so much the taking down of servers and losing connectivity for Sony customers what Sony cares about, its 100% case of THE DATA STORED ON THEIR WAN/LAN INFRASTRUCTURE!!
Think about it, if Sony's top 10 big third parties had sensitive data stored servers and a hacker got to it and shared it out like wiki leaks!!! them Sony would be in a world of pay from those third parties......"knowledge is power"
04-10-2011
05:31 PM
Sony will also make an apology to their users for any disruption to services and directly blame Anonymous as the reason. They will also use this whole thing to get legal and social support for their strong arm user information tactics. When innocent IP' are blocked Anonymous will be blamed and the vast majority of users will just believe that and become even more entrenched in their belief that hackers are scum.
Anonymous are trying to do well I think, but they really are failing to see who and what they are fighting against here.
If they/we want to win this, then Sony Has to be discredited, not us.
EDIT Using GH' statement that he has never used PSN and was blatantly unaware of any ToS' etc is also not a good move in my opinion as he is seen as intelligent (by fact of his iPhone hack) so saying this just makes people think "Yeah right, and I'm a pink pixie" lol
04-10-2011
05:44 PM
Apparently, Anonymous is gonna stage protests outside of any and every Sony store or retail outlet so get your Anonymous masks and capes ready kiddos! I'm making mad bank selling these extra masks and capes I stocked up on during Halloween clearance 4 years ago! Ha ha ha!
04-10-2011
05:51 PM
04-10-2011
10:10 PM
Yeah buddy!
04-11-2011
02:06 AM
If they want to get at Sony then anonymous just needs to release a 3.60CFw and 3.61 etc etc.. That will really piss Sony off. BUT if Anonymous is unskilled and can only do DDoS nothing more, then they shouldn't attack the player base in the future.
04-11-2011
02:46 AM
Hey I know you guys are gonna hate me for saying this but hey it's a thought..
Why does $ony not implement a PSN membership fee for online play like M$ does it works and hell everyone then gets a chance to come online
I know it defeats the purpose of their oringal proposal of free online play, but hell I miss PSN and the only reason I love the CFW so far is that I dont need me BR-Disc reader that much saving the lifespan of the lazer, and not too mention all the AWESOME Hombrew.. (cant wait for mkv and full NTFS support built into the CFW)
But most of all the DEVs have done so much for the PS3 Console making it the Super MAchine it claimed and "IS"
04-11-2011
02:50 AM
Your all mad, if anybody thinks they are gonna beat Sony with all this then they
are just pee'ing into the wind.
They have stopped the Cfw with 3.60, they have stopped the PSN hacks, and they are just laughing at the Anonymous group.
Sony will win this battle because we are giving them the ammo, everytime Sony are attacked in any way just enhances thier case, all this will be presented to the courts and Geo and friends will be held responsible.
While we all want to have our cake and eat it Sony are going to win, this wont be won by hackers or in court, this can only be won by the consumer.
The consumer is king.
04-11-2011
08:00 AM
Last the hacking incidents of late have no relation to Geohotz case, and if Sony brought it up as a point of defense, again the judge would dismiss on grounds that a) Sony should already be protecting itself, which it has; b) there's other companies other than Sony that get nailed from DDOS attacks and they are not necessarily members from Anon either that attack.
04-11-2011
08:11 AM
As to GH etc being blamed, no they will not be blamed, but as they have not publically stated that they have nothing to do with the DDoS attacks or even that they do not support them, it will add another black mark on them as far as the courts are concerned in my opinion as Anonymous have mentioned on more than one occasion that they are doing this partly in GH' defence. For Christs sake, it has not even been decided where the case against GH will be held, so that alone shows that Sony have leverage with the courts. Also the fact that Sony have been allowed to change their internal business structure whilst there is an ongoing court case is laughable as it basically means that it is a different entity prosecuting the 'offenders' (I am in UK though so only have Very limited knowledge of US legal systems).
04-11-2011
02:12 PM
I think anonymous is a group of freaking retards.
Nothing will come out of this...
they are only making sony mad.
Sony will never change their rules.
04-11-2011
03:00 PM
What's the point of them attacking Sony now? Geohot surrendered. Anonymous is now fighting for nothing. I guess it's up to Graf_Chokolo now....I believe he's the only one being sued by Sony now.
04-11-2011
04:01 PM
as for anonymous, they were fighting for nothing, achieved nothing, and most were not affiliated with the real anonymous
04-13-2011
06:27 PM
Anonymous is the hacker-activist group that outwitted a CIA security contractor, disrupted the Australian Government, and went toe-to-toe with the Church of Scientology. Now they are after Sony as a response to the George Hotz case.
This morning, denial of service attacks (DdoS) were aimed at several Sony PlayStation sites. For a period of time the PlayStation store and PlayStation.com were reported down by the Register.
An Anonymous splinter group called SonyRecon has begun more aggressive attacks as it seeks personal information about those involved in the case. A message from the groups chat forum reads, “some one got the phone number of the head of the sony company.” SonyRecon is using the phone number to post fake “erotic service” advertisement on Craigslist.
The idea is to use the personal information, phone numbers, email, and home addresses, to embarrass and harass the people the attack targets. For example, another message from the forum explains, “STD Postcards – send one of these e-postcards notifying the target that one of their previous sexual partners has a STD. ...Alternatively call an AIDS hotline and ask them to anonymously tell the target they could have HIV, that[']s a 6 month wait until the test comes back.“
PlayStationLifestyle.net confirms that the “group have already uncovered Sony employees’ family records and personal details.” SonyRecon is even targeting the lawyers involved in the case. Currently, the website of the law-firm representing Sony is down.
The group can be offensive and often uses illegal means, but it usually accomplishes it's goals. Earlier this year, Anonymous stole emails from HBGary that proved they had contracts with companies that involved using malware (virus like software) to steal private information. This prompted a Congressional hearing on the CIA contractor and resulted in the stepping down of it's CEO, Aaron Barr. THIS GROUP DONT MESS AROUND !
04-13-2011
06:46 PM
Using phone numbers etc to post fake porn adverts?????
Please tell me that is a joke?
What Anonymous has done in the past was valid and exposed corruption in more than one area, fake porn adverts is just pathetic and the only thing it will win is contempt.
04-13-2011
08:18 PM
Just got me another ps3 and Sonys Surround HD wireless headphones with my VAIO laptop
Sony is awesome! Just not the way they think
04-14-2011
03:27 AM
most of these attacks are not carried out by the real anonymous but rather by scriptkiddies out for attention.
attacking like this achieves nothing.
anonymous should attack Sony in a different way. maybe by actually, actively helping the devs to stay safe and under the radar in an effort to carry on their work. I'm sure the real anonymous could quite easily do this. take away sonys dominance and it will harm them more than otherwise possible. if you stand for freedom, then help us achieve freedom. don't oppress the oppressors, it makes you as bad as them.
04-14-2011
03:40 AM
Wait.... Whut?
04-16-2011
03:03 AM
According to Anonymous the war has just begun and Sony can expect "the biggest attack we have ever witnessed"
