Sony mulls hacker bounty offer Sony execs are mulling the possibility of offering bounties for any information that leads to the arrests of hackers who breached its network. The unspecified reward might be only offered by Sony through the FBI in a bid to tease out information on a security breach that affected as many as 100 million customers, All Things …
It's never smart to keep taunting those who've already kicked your sorry butt once and publicly.
Instead of hinting at bounties, you would be better served in HIRING the preps instead. At least THEY knew where the security holes were, and probably still are, plus a few they HAD NOT YET discuss with the rest of the legion.
Just because they're made of badger paws doesn't mean they can't still slice you open if you're stupid enough to play with them.
I suspect that if this was a member of Anonymous pulling a smash and grab that they'll go to court without the backing of the legion. Anonymous is all for freedom of speech and protecting consumer rights. I highly doubt that they'll be quick to defend the theft of personal and financial data just because it happened to be done by one of their own. It just doesn't mesh with what they seem to stand for.
Then again they may prove me wrong, in which case I'll loose what little respect I have for them (I usually agree with thier ends, but have major issues with their means).
"I suspect that if this was a member of Anonymous pulling a smash and grab that they'll go to court without the backing of the legion. Anonymous is all for freedom of speech and protecting consumer rights. I highly doubt that they'll be quick to defend the theft of personal and financial data just because it happened to be done by one of their own. It just doesn't mesh with what they seem to stand for."
Some caveats here first of all: I have nothing to do with any Anonymous-type stuff, so any secret handshake stuff is completely out of my realm. But you're talking about Anonymous as if everyone has membership cards which entitle people to the secret clubhouse or whatever. In fact, there's no evidence to suggest that Anonymous is anything more than just a convenient label to put on a bunch of people who like doing dodgy/daring/legal/illegal stuff and have joined up, perhaps through some well-trafficked forum, perhaps through other means, to go and do it.
That's the problem with the modern media and corporate mindsets. I'm surprised that there weren't reports of the CIA checking Bin Laden's wallet for his special Al Qaida discount card. "Oh noes, it's missing: it isn't him after all!" And such nonsense.
Felt I needed to say something as I seriously cant believe someone down-voted your post...
Widowed USA, GSOH, N/S, likes torture, puppet regimes, advancing corporate interests, seeks new easygoing bogeyman for friendship, torturous fun, suppressing own people & maybe more.
I agree, depressingly familiar.
Now; if I was, say, perusing compromised machines in Sony's network and spotted some very promising security hole but lacked either the skill, energy or freewheelin nature(*) to exploit them.. I'd probably place them in a hacker friendly forum, where I know blackhats hang out, and sit back to enjoy the show.
(*) 7 proxies and a love of prison food.
Sparticus. And I suspect a lot of others will be given the nature of anonymous. The fact is Sony are clueless and their clueless setup and still remain utterly clueless means they deserve all they get. And yes, you can count on it I'm still holding the grudge from the rootkit.
Count on it.
Well, not really. But even if I would work for such an outfit they'd notice I am posting "[x] anonymously", so I must be part of anonymous, so they'd rat me out to the FBI sooner than hire me. Or so I expect they'd reason anyway, seeing how they've repeatedly accused "haxxorz!" even when it was their own silly fault.
Or rather, damnable and hard to excuse oversight but since they're a globocorp "everyone" just accepts that as the quirks of big corporate squeaky wheel machinations. I'll leave that philosophical angle out of it except to note that it's a fundamental threat to privacy: Shit _will_ happen. Another reason to harden the identity system so that identities are robust to abuse, something they so clearly are not now.
The problem with accusing "anonymous" is that even if every last one of them would come out and say "yes I too did it" that still would leave plenty of room for uncertainty. It maybe sony didn't think this one through. It may also be they're deliberately muddying the waters. They've been less than squeaky clean with this and in the past both--recall their music rootkit, anyone?
Merely discussing holes in sony systems isn't enough to "pinpoint" the anonymous collective, as sony has been a shiny bright pulsing homing beacon of a target ever since that rootkit and even more so more recently with their ps3 hijinks--that's THEIR hijinks, not geohot's or anyone elses. I could just as well point to "the chinese" or "the russians" or "the balkanites", as snagging PII that sells well on the black market from such a target while the act itself almost automatically redirects attention toward someone else ("anonymous" as the default blindingly obvious blame target) is just too good to leave alone.
Any road, there simply isn't enough information to sensibly guess any way and sony isn't telling. Their accusations are about as trustworthy as the rest of their handling of the incident. As an attack on their public standing it's quite effective. But that's just about all we know.
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