In the past couple of days most media outlets have picked up the news about the Sony Pictures hacking operation performed by Anonymous members. Since some things didn’t add up, I investigated the matter and some interesting things revealed themselves.
It turns out that one of the main actors of the operation,
s3rver.exe, is in fact a 13-year-old who wanted to attract some attention and the manner in which he did so wasn’t to the liking of others part of
OpSony.
One of the other hackers behind OpSony,
Stefman, contacted me on Anonymous’ IRC channel to provide some clarifications about the “major hacking” operation that took place.
“The Facebook ‘hack’ was not a hack at all. Facebook was never breeched by s3rver. It’s a simple trick anyone can perform by creating a new Facebook account, setting the profile picture to the target's and having the same name. By doing this, when you post on the target’s wall it looks as though it is the target speaking,” Stefman said.
Believing that these tricks and the interviews
s3rver.exe was giving could seriously discredit their operations, other hacktivist that run the op against Sony decided to reveal the whole thing.
While Sony Pictures representatives admitted their systems were breached, it seems that it wasn’t a serious breach as s3rver.exe advertised it.
“The Sony website hack I can confirm was real, however, all he did was manage to gain access to an empty server's admin panel and the hole was swiftly fixed by Sony. But that was not just him. He had two other members of our community helping with that,” he added.
“S3rver, in all honesty, I believe just to be a young naive script kiddy just looking for a bit of attention and internet fame.”
Stefman claims that this is not the end of the operation against Sony. Their support for SOPA and because they allegedly state that hackers “are no more than an annoyance” causes a lot of discontent among online activists.
“OpSony is still going on at the moment, though s3rver has set it back some in his naivety. We are still going forward and we have some new members strengthening our force.”
Finally, I wanted to clarify if hackers operating under the Anonymous name are in fact the ones that run this op.
“OpSony is an Anon operation, yes. An important thing to bear in mind though is as with all communities, some Anon members will not agree with the op, but the majority seems to, in this case.
“The important thing to remember is that Anon is a community, not an organized hierarchy with leadership. We’re a community coming together to fight for the rights of ‘Joe Blogs’ on the street.”
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