14 DAY TRIAL // A hacker group that has acknowledged it has already attacked Sony owned websites has publicly said that it plans to launch more attacks against the company, with one of the possible targets being the already stricken PlayStation Network.
LulzSec, a group that has claimed responsibility that have taken down the Sony owned BMG website in Japan, has said via Twitter message, “We're working on another Sony operation. We've condensed all our excited tweets into this one: this is the beginning of the end for Sony.”
The group added, “#Sownage (Sony + Ownage) Phase 1 will begin within the next day. We may have a pre-game show for you folks though. Stay tuned.”
Sony's hacker troubles began on April 20 when the PlayStation Network, which powered multiplayer for the home console created by the company and allowed users to buy and download content, has been taken down as a group of assailants managed to break into the system and steal a huge amount of personal information, including sensitive credit card information.
Sony has done a poor job of managing the crisis but has managed to relaunch the PSN recently and says that the Store component of the service will also be fully functional before the end of this week.
Sony has not managed to pint point the identity of the hacker group that stole the information from PSN, which means that the threats from LulzSec might mean a new assault on the service is coming in the near future.
Initial suspicions were aimed at Internet activist group Anonymous, which had earlier protested against the way Sony treated George Hotz, aka Geohot, but no definite proof was produced.
Sony has recently announced that the PSN downtime and the Welcome Back service that has been recently launched will cost it more than 170 million dollars and that it would impact its bottom line for the year.