14 DAY TRIAL // Anonymous, the Internet based activist group that has in the last few days waged electronic war on Sony, has announced that it will no longer be targeting the PlayStation Network service after the majority of gamers responded angrily to the problems that they encountered when logging on and playing multiplayer games.
Official Sony sites and the PSN were assaulted as Anonymous justified its actions by saying that they were exacting pay back for the way the hardware developer has treated the group of hackers who have compromised the defenses of the PlayStation 3 and made their methods public.
A representative from Anonymous has said, “This attack is aimed solely at Sony and we will try our best to not affect the gamers, as this would defeat the purpose of our actions. If we did inconvenience users, please know that this was not our goal. ... That being said, our campaign against Sony and others that would trample on the idea of free information will continue, until we are satisfied with the outcome.”
At an earlier time during the day Sony also responded to the attacks, stating, “We are currently investigating, including the possibility of targeted behavior of an outside party. If this is indeed caused by such an act, we want to once again thank our customers who have borne the brunt of the attack through interrupted service. Our engineers are working to restore and maintain the services.”
Anonymous is a pretty loose organization, which means that the teams involved in operations against Sony might not fully coordinate with one another, leading to the possibility that the PSN might still be targeted by some.
Sony is probably also working to make the PSN as impervious to attacks as possible as a lot of players depend on it for multiplayer gaming and for content download.