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Sony's legal dust-ups with PS3 modders George 'GeoHot' Hotz and Graf_Chokolo have earned it the ire of the 'hacktivist' group known as Anonymous. This weekend, the infamous online entity issued a less-than-subtle threat stating that Sony "saw a hornests nest, and stuck [its] penises in it," and would therefore face the full brunt of Anonymous' wrath. We can't think of any worse punishment than sticking one's manhood into a nest of armed insects, so this should be interesting.
Dubbed Operation Sony, the retaliation is part of Anonymous' Operation Payback; an initiative which seeks to disable websites belonging to perceived opponents of free-rights content with distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS). The unidentified group claims Sony violated basic free-use freedoms when it sued GeoHot and arrested the German hacker Graf_Chokolo for allegedly engaging in PS3 jailbreaking activities.
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Given Anonymous' track record, this is no empty threat. Comprised of shadowy hackers from across the internet, the group has engaged in similar web-based attacks against heavy hitters such as Amazon, YouTube, the Westboro Baptist Church, and – perhaps most notably, the Church of Scientology. Members of Anonymous were also reported to have been responsible for disabling ex-President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party website during the recent Egyptian protests.
Whether you agree with its methods or not, Anonymous gets results. This isn't likely to make Sony rethink its own fight with GeoHot, but it is likely to sting. More than a hundred junk-attacking hornets? Who knows. But again, we doubt it.
April 4, 2011
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