Sony were treated to a Denial Of Service attack today, from the same mob that attacked a load of sites that had withdrawn support for Wikileaks founder Julianna Assange, in retribution for the company's legal pursuit of PlayStation 3 hackers GeoHot and Graf_Chokolo.
"Congratulations, Sony," a spokesperson for the anarchic collective wrote on its site over the weekend. "You have now received the undivided attention of Anonymous.
"Your recent legal action against our fellow hackers, GeoHot and Graf_Chokolo, has not only alarmed us, it has been deemed wholly unforgivable."
GeoHot – real name George Hotz – has been forced by a court in the US to hand over computer equipment to Sony’s lawyers, who also succeeded in securing access to the Hotz’s PayPal account in an attempt to prove that the hacker had accepted donations for his work on the PS3 private key hack.
Fellow PS3 hacker Graf_Chokolo was arrested by German police in February in connection with the case. Also had his equipment seized in a raid at the young German’s home which subsequently was handed over to Sony lawyers looking for evidence against GeoHot.
Anonymous regulars have previously carried out Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against high-profile targets, restricting or disabling the websites of Amazon, PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, after the companies withdrew services from whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks.
Quite how this case is going to pan out is anyone's guess - Sony are adamant that they pursue anyone who is caught tinkering with its Playstation 3, especially if they are seen to make a profit from the hacking.
Whether anonymous have the garl to take on Sony and beat them seem rather unlikely - as much as we like a good hacker - there's no excuse in what they have done.
The whole debacle stems from Sony removing the ability have a Linux running on the PS3 which was removed and subsequently started a tick for tat war between hackers and Sony. Sony have the combined power of a load of money and the finest lawyers money can buy – our money is on Sony.