Except they aren't black hats.

See? Wouldn't that have been better than, "Herp derp, I dunno what they use but I'm gonna bash Microsoft"? I don't mind if people dislike things in the least; everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it was presented in a most ignorant way. But hey, now you've shown that you are not.

.. and I just wanted to add to Defron's post, and this usually made the news back in the day, there are also some security companies who will hack a product (being an OS, user application, firewall, etc..), then turn around and show the company owning the product product how they did it, in an attempt to get security contracts from said company.

Are they being paid by a third-party to continually hack Sony? I'v not seen anything proving this is organized through a profitted group. Until there is proof that a group is being contracted to attack Sony, they'd be black-hat. Otherwise it's white hat.

I raise you an RSA hack involving Outlook and Excel
I take it you heard about that, right? Talk about insecure security...

White hats don't need contracts. A white hat is any hacker or hacker group that hacks an entity, then informs that entity of their vulnerabilities, without damaging them.

The group only published a portion of the database to prove they did it, and nothing more. As Defron said, they should have used to media instead of just posting a database, but their intentions were not hostile.

Thus, White Hats.

1. it's not the same people doing these different hacks. The PSN hack just proved how vulnerable Sony was and how abysmal their security practices were, making it a prime target.

2. White hat isn't determined by contracts, that'd be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueHat. White hat is anyone who hacks, then informs the hacked so they can fix it. If they don't fix it they go to the Media or publish the method of the hack.

The PSN hackers were definitely black hats, Sony has also been hacked one other time by white hatters, and this time I'd say it's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_hat as they publish a portion of the hacked information to draw attention to the security vulnerability.

As far as I've heard several different groups have hacked Sony.

Forget what the hackers got away with,Sony are one of the biggestand richest companies out there,and this shows the comtempt they continue to show for their customer's,from the way the handle compliants.the delay when it came to announceing card details where stolen and but not ecrypting files logging customers passwords.

No company should act like this,it doesn't stop at Sony and throws up a good few questions about the conduct of ALL businesses..

I'd like to point out if the company I work for followed the same practices as Sony that I'd be fired, my boss would be fined, and more than likely his license would be revoked after a hearing from a review board.


... Gotta love HIPPA...

Funny thing is, I'd still trust Sony. Call it being long time service because I have never had problems with them. But I'm not in the same situation as anyone. If I used a credit card with them, and someone got my information, congratulations. My bank will lock any purchase over $300 that I don't call in advance and say 'I am going to be spending a large portion of money on this specific item' (at my discretion, I had to talk to the manager of my bank and give specific instructions added).

I don't think this will cripple Sony nearly as much as people thing. Whilst it will be costly to them, if this happened to most other companies, they'd be sunk already.

When it comes to Sony, it always Sony fault, aaaaaaaaaaand the hackers got away, again :rolleyes:

HA! What a load of crap. I love psn, but sony needs to just take ALL of their security and revamp it ten fold. Then I think they will finally be in the clear. maybe. But whatever Sony did to piss these guys off was obviously a big deal.

Me and 3 friends from my NETW course in college got into a local ISP database for Rogers. Nothing in-depth. Just to see if we could even 'access' it, however it was read-write protected. We might of been able to go further, but we just checked to test stuff we'd been learning. If a few students can get into something small like this, it won't take much for any hacker, anywhere, to crack anything. The only reason stuff like banks aren't targeted, is well. They'd probably find you and have you assassinated..

No matter how good security is, people working around the clock to purposely break it, will break it.

Only in part,as if I got burgeled afer leaving my window open...

As for getting away this happened yesterday,in the eyes of the law,this was wholey illeigel,so who knows,a month down the line,there may be arrests....but it's highly unlikely.

Is it just me, or would capping [censored]es after committing any sort of crime make people think twice about doing something wrong? Not to mention, would probably make the world alot less stupid.

Oppressive law enforcement and cruel, over-the-top penalties are more likely to cause bottom-up resistance to the status quo and creates the risk of a major destabilization of social order.

Like that's a bad thing? :tongue:

Corporations are completely incompetent at anything that isn't about making money in the most legally illegitimate way possible? Who knew? At least this time it was done in a manner trying to get some "good" out of the whole ordeal. Maybe this time Sony will pay attention, lest it happens again.

Err... you couldn't just use "stealing your stuff" as an example, could you? wtf.

I think a lot of people are finding it hard to have any sympathy for Sony since it's championed consumer-unfriendly practises for decades. I'd already boycotted them for a long time thanks to buying a series of shoddy, poorly manufactured goods that broke down and appeared to be irreparable by design, but if not for that, their love of anything that restricts the end-user's right to use their products without hindrance and which helps to fix prices would have had the same outcome. With that as a backdrop, I tend to take the opinion that they deserve everything they get.

I should mention that I have a low tolerance for self-styled hackers: whether simple vandals or show-offs or those who have a definite criminal intent they're a nuisance and I'm not keen on their presence. But in situations like this, Sony are so morally reprehensible that it tends to eclipse their activities somewhat, at least in my eyes.

SOME are criminals. A lot however do this for a living, as in, companies hire hackers to "test" their security, so they can better secure it. Hackers have, more or less, been an integral part of modern e-security.

I could. But people seem to be taking this whole Sony string of events as something that is way more serious than it really is. And they are taking the attacking side, rather than the victim. So why not make the comparison something serious and costly [emotionally costly]?

If I used 'stealing', then people can write it off as 'whatever', but when something emotionally scarring happens to someone, you can't just write it off. So let's take it to the next step. You can't write something like this off if it happened to your family member. Whilst both sides can be at fault in something like this, it's the person causing it who is to blame, not the person being attacked. It's no different in the case with what is happening to Sony. The only thing is, people are more or less taking something to an extreme and trying to blame a company for something that happened, out of their control. It works both ways.

I might agree with you but in this case it doesn't appear to be the case. If they had been hired by Sony, I doubt that we'd even be discussing this issue...again.

But Lulzsec aren't hired by anyone.
I hate hackers, it's like the [censored]-ass version of breaking into someones house.