Is Spider Truman the Italian Wikileaks ?

In october 2010, Silvio Berlusconi laughed at Wikileaks’ revelations about Italy, but he may not laugh at Spider Truman.

The (Venetian)-masked avenger

This is quite a good time to make the power crumble. As Europe is staggering, with the debt of countries like Greece and Portugal, the Italian Senato (Senate) have vote an austerity plan of 47 billion euros in order to fill up the debt.

This political cast in Italy lives in a way that is diametrically opposed to the reality of all Italians. Many Italians were irate to discover that of the 48 billion euros of cuts in the austerity package, only 7.7 million euros, or 0.016 percent, would apply to politicians.

The italian masked avenger

Yet, social networks are back for good. An anonymous person created the Italian Wikileaks, which was launched on saturday, 16th of July : Spider Truman. Today, there are 350 000 « likes » on the Facebook page. The name of the group is in italian “I segreti della casta di Montecitorio” or “The secrets of the cast of Montecitorio”, Motecitorio referring to the Italian Parliament. He also created a Twitter account  (11 000 subscribers for only 5 tweets ) and a blog.

This man (or is it a woman?) claims to be a former employee of the Italian Parliament, who have been recently fired after 15 years of temporary contracts. Everyday, on these different platforms, he reveals all the dirty-little-secrets of the Italian high-ranking officials. Spider Truman expresses the anger of a people, whose deputies are the kings of political skulduggery. He is the masked avenger of all insecure Italians. Several newspapers already called him “the new Assange” as a reference to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

No one have yet been able to check the identity (so the credibility) of the avenger. In the boot-shaped peninsula, everybody is wondering if all this is not a huge hoax. The blogger refuses to draw idealistic reasons, he is just taking revenge. He declared that he doesn’t care about information and doesn’t expect a citizen participation, but is doing a vendetta. Here is what is written as information on his Facebook group (Google Translation) :

I AM : A person with no political party behind him, no marketing agency.

I AM NOT : To journalists who desperately try to investigate on my past, my identity, I reply that I do not have a face and a name. Leave me alone, I do not want fame or publicity. I just want to express my indignation.

I AM ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND : Spider Truman are nothing more than all those who are angry and tired of the abuses and arrogance of power.

Dirty-big-secrets

His revelations are done by the book, with a lot of mysteries, like the message he wrote on Facebook on monday morning : “To the 200 000 registered people, let’s meet at 13 o’clock”. As a genuine master of suspense, he discloses the facts little by little.

Endless privileges, social and fiscal advantages, but that’s not all. Italians have read on Spider Truman that the Deputees’ barbers earn not less than 11 000 euros per month. He also reveals that in order to have an official escort for them and their whole family, parliamentarians ask someone they trust to write a letter of threat, or that a theft report for something used at work (for example a laptop) allows them to get an insurance for all their private property…

Every fact is given with supporting evidence, photos of official documents to detail, for example, the discounts parliamentarians get when they buy a new car (up to 20 per cent) or on bills for their cell phones.

Is that enough to make the Parliament shake and crumble?

For the moment, the masked avenger doesn’t give names or doesn’t reveal major issues, but the country is hanging on his every word. Yet, the country have already faced the humiliation of Silvio Berlusconi’s affairs in prostitution, abuse of power, corruption or tax evasion. Is it even possible to make it worse?

Well, people are already gathering in the street and have called for spontaneous demonstrations in front of the Parliament. They are grass-roots groups, and call themselves « the Indignant Ones ». La Repubblica, an italian newspaper, quoted one of this « Indignant » :

(The government) can’t ask citizens, particularly low and middle income earners, to make heavy economic sacrifices without chipping away at the privileges of parliamentarians!

Spider Truman is not already defying the government, but his revelations are the last straw that breaks the Italians’ back. Soon, we can be sure that there will be more and more demonstrations and we will see revolutions just like in Spain or Portugal, but this time, debt and unemployment are not the only reasons, but the outrageous way of life of a crumbling cast of politicians. They are now loosing control of a whole country. I’m looking forward to the next revelation…!

Google Plus, the new Facebook?

It’s been a week since Google has announced his brand-new social network Google Plus. What is really Google Plus? Check it out!

You, in Google Plus

Google Plus, the new Facebook?

It would be a shame to see this new network as an ersatz of Facebook. Google claims that it is really different and new. Of course, on the content, it looks like all social networks, with publications, videos, statuses, and links. The also looks like Facebook, with the “news feed” as a column in the middle, and the “+1” used as the Facebook “Like” button. Yet, there are quite a lot of differences between the two networks.

First, Google Plus is willing to bring all the best from the web on one platform. The goal is to keep the users on the Google site, where all the services are gathered, and not to have them once in a while, like on Facebook, because the only content is the social network. Google offers a range of new possibilities that has never been seen before.

Facebook have also been critiqued toward the confidentiality of contents, and Google promised a better protection.

What’s the Plus on Google Plus?

We all know that we don’t talk and share with all the people of our life the same way. On Facebook, all the contents are shared with all the supposed-to-be friends, but the point is that they are not all as friends as we think.

Because they are afraid to write something wrong, compromising, Facebook users are forced to censure themselves. We all have in ming the worker who posted pictures of his sunny holidays when he has supposed to be on sick-leave. It’s better to avoid those bad surprises.

Learning from Facebook’s mistakes, Google had the idea of these “circles”. But what is exactly all that about?

Let’s explain everything from the beginning.

When someone adds you, you can put this person in a circle (for exemple : colleagues, college friends, family, friends from the photography club).

Then, you have the possibility to partition the contents you are posting. Of course, you can share everything with everyone, but you can also share photos with your photo-friends, or party-pictures with your crazy college friends, but you can also share very serious stuff with you colleagues and even with your boss, and we won’t know anything about your wildlife! To your parents, you can only say that “everything-is-fine-thank-you-very-much”, and to your all family you can say “Happy Birthday”, but not all the (horrible) things you think about them after a whole week end with them. This seems to be a good solution to avoid bad surprises and embarrassing remarks.

Furthermore, Google Plus works just like Twitter with the system of “following” and “followers”. You can follow everyone you’d like to follow, but all these person will not necessarily follow you. This option seems quite enchanting for celebrities or brands. Let’s imagine a situation : You are walking in the street, you get geolocalised using Google Plus on your smartphone. You will then be a target for all the shops around you. They will be able to get personalized offers from them. Foursquare having been bought by Google was then a genius idea of them. In France, Bouygues Telecom and IKEA are already on the network to develop their visibility on proximity offers.

But the Plus is not only all that (even if it’s already quite a lot!). On Facebook, you can easily chat (when there are no bugs) with the people you like, but you won’t see their faces. Skype is quite good, but it’s not enough. You can only video-chat with one person in the free version of the software. What Google Plus wants to offer is a video-chat up to 10 persons, both for work meetings or for a party organization, for instance.

The “cloud” is also the trend for this year. IBM’s user can upload their datas in the “cloud”, Apple’s “Mobile me” will soon become « iCloud », and Google is also following this way. When you’ll take a picture with your mobile, it’ll be automatically put in the cloud. You’ll be able to have access to them from every computer and to share.

Why is everyone staring at Google?

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, already declared that he “screwed up (on social networking)” because he didn’t succed in bringing the firm in the era of social networking. 

Between 2009 and 2010, both Google Wave (the revolutionary mail box) and Google Buzz (the kind of social network) failed miserably.

That’s also why Larry Page, the new CEO of Google, made social networking his priority number one, and will try to avoid the mistakes of the past few years.

Will it work?

Will all this new and revolutionary ideas be enough to concurrence the big-fat Facebook?

We can notice that the first thousands of users who had been invited on the beta-test version of Google Plus came so quickly that Google had to shut down the access for new users only after 48 hours. The happy few (including me) are now invited to test and discover all the part of it. Google didn’t mention when the real version will be available to the whole world.

Facebook, on its side, is not waiting. Four of the firm best engineers have already developped a new application that will allow users to organize their friends in circles… Seems familiar? This application, which is still not Facebook official, is called “Circle Hack” and seems to be directly inspired by Google Plus. The question is how will Google react to this direct threat?

But Mark Zuckerberg is also trying to investigate his concurrent’s social network. He is currently the most followed user of the beta-test version of Google Plus (even before Larry Page…), and it seems that it’s not an usurper : the profile picture is an unpublished one, and all his friends are from the Facebook team. This is really not surprising, considering how the launch of Google Plus is threatening the biggest social network with 700 million users (but, still, this number is now stagnant)… Is he trying to collect ideas where they are, or are they planning a hack, since they have George Hotz (Geohot) in their team now?

Let’s see what happened, and stay tuned!

Harry Potter, and more…

JK Rowling wanted to keep the suspense about her beloved Harry Potter… is it all about money?

The last Harry Potter book was published 4 years ago, and the ultimate movie will be on screens this summer. How is it possible to maintain the interest in the most popular wizard of all times? His mother and her communication agencies still have a magic trick or two up their sleeves.

The website Pottermore

« Pottermaniacs », junior wizards and muggles already imagined a little brother for their favorite hero. Indeed, mid-June, J.K Rowling launched a very mysterious internet called Pottermore, and created a quite as mysterious YouTube channel.

The homepage of the website showed two owls, and the note « Coming soon », signed by the author, with the date of the 23^rd of June 2011. Even if JK’s spokesman already said that it won’t be a new book, but a brand-new project, the suspense was at its height!

Harry Potter 2.0

Thursday, 23^rd of June, at the selected date, the multimillionaire author simply announced the launched of a new website at the end of july, where thousands of fans will be able to get e-books of their favorite series.

But that’s not all : some unpublished chapters will be available online. This new platform, built in partnership with Sony, will be launched in october. All this operation is before everything commercial, in order to announce a new-all digital Potter.

The site will be free in its ludic part, but the project also presents an online shop where e-books will be sold. JK Rowling keep the exclusive rights of these digital books, instead of leaving them to existing resellers or online libraries, like Amazon or Apple, but they will be compatible with all existing platforms (like Kindle, iPad or Sony Reader…).

This is an unwelcome news for traditional bookstores, which truly helped Rowling to sell hundreds of millions of the Potter adventures. In the other hand, it’s also a landmark for the growing electronic market. Indeed, e-books were 1 percent of total sales four years ago. They now account for more than 20 percent.

How to keep the suspense (Potter)more and more…

Most fans will have to wait until october to reach the Pottermore website, but one million of “happy few”, who already registered, will be able to take up challenges and to reach the website on the 31^st of July (Harry’s birthday). Users of the site will be asked to choose a wizard name and are sorted into different houses at Hogwarts. They can travel through a virtual world that recreates the Harry Potter books. It is also possible to interact with other members of the site, and there are games, challenges and interactive attractions including a virtual train carriage that takes them to Hogwarts.

This wonderful commercial operation made also a huge “buzz” on the Internet. Here are just a few figures that are quite unbelievable : Pottermore’s twitter account is about 6 tweets. Yet, there are (today, and it’s still increasing!) 130 737 followers.

More than 230 000 people (including me) shared the link www.pottermore.com on Facebook. Several accounts of « Pottemore » have been created on Facebook, but they all score thousands of « Likes ».

The channel « JK Rowling Announces » on YouTube is also high-scoring. The video of the announcement have already been seen 5 million times. It is the channel withthe most subscribers for this mounth, in a worldwide scale, and the 76th of all time in UK for only a video!

A question still remains : will all this operation be a new surprise or an other well-tried marketing recipe? Isn’t Harry Potter too much of a cash cow? Let’s see how long it will last…!




The cyberspace is a battlefield

The last year has proved to be a game-changer in the perception of threats in cyberspace. Above all, the discovery of the computer worm Stuxnet alerted the world that cyber-weaponry capable of causing real havoc to advanced industrial systems is now a reality. The Guardian

What happened to Lockheed Martin?

Lockheed Martin got hacked. But who/what is Lokheed Martin, and why is it so important?

Well, if you consider that Lockheed Martin is worldwide known for being one of the biggest manufacturers of weapon systems and fighter planes, but also for being the first supplier of the US military and the Pentagon, then you will understand the issue.

What really happened? Back on March 2011, RSA, the manufacturer of SecurID, which supplies coded access tokens to millions of corporate users and government officials, got hacked. The hackers had been able to take these secure master key files, and created another method of hacking.

Lockheed and RSA Security are still trying to figure out if the attack was due to the RSA stolen datas or if another weakness had been used. Lockheed Martin already declared that they had enforced their security. The US Government, directly concerned by this attack because they are the major client of the firm, also declared that they were severely confronted to cyber-attacks, lead by criminals looking for datas on the US national security.

Hopefully, Lockheed Martin declared that the datas have been protected. Jeffery Adams, a Lockheed spokesman said:

We have policies and procedures in place to mitigate the cyberthreats to our business, and we remain confident in the integrity of our robust, multilayered information systems security.

The next World War could take place on the internet.

Cyber-attacks are increasing all over the world. Every month we read in newspapers about a new cyber-attack, and the last one was the attack against the firm Sony. Big corporations, especially government-related firms tend to keep the issue of internal security secret, but companies do occasionally reveal such attacks, sometimes forced by the huge impact it has on customers.

Yet, countries constantly try to enforce their defence against pirates. In France, the agency which fights against cyber-attacks towards the state and the important companies, the French Network and Information Security Agency (FNISA) (ANSSI : Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information) is being developed. They are planning to hire hundreds of new engineers, in order to react more quickly to cyber-attacks, learning for the huge attack towards the French finance ministry in March. The Canadian government also got hacked  in February and, at the other part of the world, Australia advised its biggest companies to settle strong security measures against cybercriminality.

Who is on the frontline of the battlefield?

In 2010, an article of the British Times outlined that NATO and the European Union had been told to protect themselves against China’s attacks. A member of the NATO declared:

Everyone has been made aware that the Chinese have become very active with cyber-attacks and we’re now getting regular warnings from the office for internal security.

The attacks are part of wars between states, and the rivals of the US are obviously, and since quite a while, China and Russia, as an article of the Telegraph said:

In what appeared to be one of the most audacious acts of cyber-warfare conducted so far, the breach came against a backdrop of repeated attempts by rivals of the US, chiefly China and Russia, to infiltrate information networks and glean details of major weapons systems.

As far as Lokheed Martin is concerned, the source of the attack has not been revealed. Yet, a Lockheed cyber intelligence analyst declared:

It’s a cat-and-mouse game between the two sides… They’re constantly trying to develop new ways of attacking us and we’re constantly trying to develop new ways of defending us.

The government of the United States now consider cyber attacks toward local companies or toward the administration as acts of war.

The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

The US are also willing to synchronize their action with their allies, in order to build new policies. The NATO already made a first step by deciding last year that if an ally was under a cyber attack, the group would be consulted and will help to respond to it. A military official of the US said:

In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.

It is now quite obvious that the biggest and wealthiest countries in the world could be reduced to ashes with some cyberattacks toward their government or their companies. The US should protect themselves now, before it’s too late… The more enemies you have, the more hacked you will be. That’s just the way it is.

Travel and Surf, surf, surf!

A few weeks ago, I had my first CouchSurfing experience. I travelled to Holland, and I wanted to try to “surf” a stranger couch. It may sound surprising, yet it was quite the best travelling experience I’ve ever had. Why do I want to talk about it? Simply because in a world ruled by selfishness and fear where everybody talks about crimes, in an age where technology isolates us, it’s nice to find a place for exchange and discovering.

What is CouchSurfing ?

CouchSurfing is an international non-profit network that connects travelers with locals in over 230 countries and territories around the world. Today, over a million people who might otherwise never meet are able to share hospitality and cultural understanding.”

If you are just looking for a place to crash for free, then you are not CouchSurfing material. It was created with the intention of building connections between people and of breaking cultural barriers. People who host have the chance to get to know travellers from all over the world and learn about their culture without leaving their home. Surfers lower the financial cost of travelling (which is quite significant), and are able to participate to the local life of the countries they visit, and enjoy the experience much more than in a hotel.

CouchSurfing is entirely funded by the members who choose to support the community, but of course, all members are able to use the whole website for free.

This is how it works: You first sign up on the website, search for the country or even the city they are planning to visit and browse through the many members who have an available couch. But there are other options: you can of course host people in your apartment, or also ask people to meet up for a coffee or a drink.

Facts and figures

There are over 1 million members on the website, who come from over 69,000 different cities and speak 302 unique languages. Since 2004, over 3.2 million successful CouchSurfing stays have been recorded. Members had reported over 5.1 million positive experiences, which is 70 percent of all CouchSurfing experiences.

The TOP 3 of CouchSufing cities worldwide are :

• (#1) Paris
• (#2) London
• (#3) Berlin

Why is it safe?

You may wonder if this adventure is safe. I can understand, it’s hard to imagine that strangers meeting strangers spend together a unique moment and sometimes build a true friendship. I was also very afraid before my first experience, but CouchSurfing provides a lot of information to ensure the greatest amount of safety for its members. Yet, here are a few things to know before jumping in the big pool of CouchSurfing.

• First, you should also read every profile of the people you are interested in very carefully. Every profile must be detailed (hobbies, work, studies, philosophy…), so you are able to gain a lot of information about them beforehand. The more people write about them, the more you can believe them. You can also search for people with the same kind of interests as yours.
• Then, check the references. Every exchange is rated and commented both from the host and the surfer. One out of every 5,000 exchanges isn’t listed as positive. Typically, the non-positive experiences happen when people accidentally offend each other or because of some cultural misunderstandings.

It’s your turn!

Traveling isn’t about the sightseeing; it’s about the people. Culture isn’t about the inanimate things, buildings and statues; it’s about what lives and breathes in the city. (…)My first time couchsurfing was in Edinburgh. (…) We didn’t do anything especially unusual, but what made the time memorable was the thrill of getting to know strangers, of discovering commonalities and differences, and of developing a sense of camaraderie with people whose lives have never intersected with yours until very recently, and people you may never see again. » Ami Tian

So here is a piece of advice : use Internet, yes, use it, please! But don’t sit forever behind your computer; select places you want to discover, search people you want to meet, and leave! Leave, travel, share with the world, learn everything, and surf, surf, SURF!

HADOPI : How the French government (tries) to tackle illegal download

If you are not French, you may have never heard about the HADOPI law. Well, consider you are lucky, because there is nothing to be delighted at…

HADOPI's official logo

What is HADOPI?

In 2009, the government of Nicolas Sarkozy decided to make war on illegal download and protect copyrights and intellectual property in the music and the film industry in France (which is not alive and kicking at the moment…).

A first bill of the HADOPI law (or Creation and Internet law) was rejected by the French National Assembly on 9 April 2009, despite a very strong backing from President Nicolas Sarkozy. The bill was reconsidered and finally adopted in May 2009 by the French National Assembly and the French Senate.
The law creates a government agency, simply called HADOPI. This acronym stands for “Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet” (« the High Authority for Transmission of Creative Works and Copyright Protection on the Internet »). This agency aims at punishing internet users who illegally download, at promoting legal download and at protecting the entertainment industry. In other words, this law made Peer-to-peer (P2P) downloads illegal.

What is HADOPI’s policy?

The HADOPI agency has initiated a very strict “three-strike” policy  to punish the pirates:

1. After a suspected offense toward copyright, an email is first sent to the pirate, in order to advise stopping illegal download.
2. If, in the 6 months following the first warning, repeated offenses are suspected, a certified letter is sent to the internet access subscriber.
3. If, during the year following the reception of the certified letter, repeated offenses are suspected, the ISP (Internet Service Provider) is required to suspend internet access for a specified period from two months to one year. The internet access subscriber is then blacklisted and other ISPs are prohibited from providing an internet connection to the blacklisted subscriber.

HADOPI: Anti-privacy, pointless and expensive.

Of course, the cause of saving artists and the industry is more than noble, but the HADOPI law gave rise to a lot of protests, especially towards the fundamental rights of privacy and freedom of expression. With this law, the French government has a free (and legal!) access to citizens’ privacy.

One of the important issues is also the cost of this unpopular law. An article of ZeroPaid (a website about online issues) settle the accounts:

The cost would be around 8.50 Euro’s per IP lookup. (…) This is where the bill goes up at a frightening rate. 16,000 look-ups at 8.50 Euros each totals 136,000 Euro’s per day. That’s about 952,000 Euros a week and about 49,640,000 Euros per year. (…) It’s surprising that France is even considering a law like this considering how fragile its economy is at this point. »

Yet, the cost of €50 million is maybe too conservative, according to another article of Zeropaid. Indeed, the ISP will have to increase their prices since they will have to foot the bill too. Plus, if they have to cut the internet access of some of their customers, how can this law be profitable for them?

Where are the results?

Frédéric Mitterand, the French Minister of Culture.

A couple of days ago, the results of a survey carried on by the French Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterand, showed that 7% of the (only!) 1500 surveyed reported that either they or someone close receieved a warning letter for illegal downloading, and 50% of them stopped entirely.

Why are the results disappointing? First, they are not representative of the whole population, and show that only 3.5% of the 1500 surveyed have stopped illegal download. French people are not stupid, they have abandoned P2P download a long time ago and now download movies or music on streaming websites, which are located in foreign countries…

The prices of DVDs, Blu-Rays, CDs, or even on legal download sites are so expensive that people still can’t afford them, and after they see the benefits of majors like Universal Music, Warner or Sony, they really don’t care about their well beiing. So they keep on listening to music on websites for free (Deezer, Jiwa, Lastfm, Music.me, etc…).

For sure, the entertainment industry in France will recover when the prices will be lower, not thanks to a pointless and extremely expensive law. But now, the process has been set in motion, and there is nothing we can do about it… Let’s wait until they have no money left to make it work… in a few years?

Sony’s drama

Prologue : George Hotz vs Sony

George Hotz

This story began in the beginning of 2010, when George Hotz (a.k.a. GeoHot), one of the world’s most famous hackers, decided to hack the PlayStation 3. This hacker is well-known for hacking new products, such as Apple’s iPhone or iPad. What he likes is showing that he can “jailbreak” everything he wants, just for his own pleasure. His exploit with the PS3 had never been done before, and he decided to publish it on his website to share it with the world. All Playstation’s owners around the Earth were then able to install pirated videogames and homebrews (homemade videogame).

Sony, after seeing that the over-protected Playstation had been hacked, had no other choice but to sue George Hotz. The trial took place on March 31, 2011, and Hotz was banned for life from the PlayStation Network, and promised to never try again to hack the PlayStation 3. Patrick Seybold, the director of Sony’s corporate communications and social media reacted on the Playstation blog regarding that case, and declared :

“We want our consumers to be able to enjoy our devices and products in a safe and fun environment and we want to protect the hard work of the talented engineers, artists, musicians and game designers who make PlayStation games and support the PlayStation Network.”

Clearly, the war was on the verge of breaking out, and Sony decided to do everything against hackers. First, they created a new version of the firmware, which had to be downloaded to access the Playstation Network. They pleaded a lack of security, but obviously they wanted to avoid customers breaking the PS3 with the help of GeoHot’s website.

Part 1 : The revenge of hackers

The fight between George Hotz and Sony didn’t go unnoticed in the world of videogames. George Hotz advised the readers of his blog to boycott Sony, and declared :

“As of 4/11/11, I am joining the SONY boycott. I will never purchase another SONY product. I encourage you to do the same. And if you bought something SONY recently, return it.”

Some of GeoHot’s followers, faithfully attached to the work of the hacker genius, decided to act.

• Anonymous

The group of hackers Anonymous was one of them. This group is well-known for having hacked Scientology or Neo-Nazis sites, as well as for supporting Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Basically, they do things online that they “wouldn’t be able to do in regular society” and act “for the lulz”.

After the trial, they were determined to threaten Sony and to stand up for GeoHot. They published a threat to warn Sony that they were ready to charge them for what they did to George Hotz :

“Congratulations, Sony. You have now received the undivided attention of Anonymous. Your recent action against our fellow hackers GeoHot and Graf-Chokolo, has not only alarmed us, it has been deeme wholly unforgivable. (…) Now you will experience the wrath of Anonymous.”

•  The attack

The problem is that some days after this threat, Sony was actually hacked. On April 19^th, they saw that servers were rebooting themselves at moments they were not supposed to. Seeing that an unusual activity was going on, they decided to shut the PlayStation Network down. Indeed, PlayStation declared a week later that some hackers succeeded to enter the PlayStation Network and Qriocity (the music platform of Sony), and stole more or less 100 million account information. It seems that the stolen information are: name, gender, address, phone number, country, email address, date of birth, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and PSN online ID, and maybe also profile data, including purchase history and billing address, and PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers…

 Part 2: Accusations

 « Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack »

This is the declaration Patrick Seybold on the PlayStation blog. They also discovered that the intruders used the name “Anonymous” with the words “We are Legion.”.

Of course, the group Anonymous was the first to be blame, considering their anger against Sony. But for them, the word “Anonymous” have been used on purpose to accuse them, and it’s not a proof at all that one of the group did it. They still claim their innocence, wrote a press release, affirming that “Anonymous has never been known to have engaged in credit card theft” and declared on their blog “For once, we didn’t do it.”. Yet, they are already willing to attack Sony as soon as the PlayStation Network will be back on.

As far as George Hotz is concerned, he claims his innocence on his blog “GeoHot Got Sued” but also blame the hackers for what they have done.

“And to anyone who thinks I was involved in any way with this, I’m not crazy, and would prefer to not have the FBI knocking on my door. Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool, hacking into someone elses server and stealing databases of user info is not cool. You make the hacking community look bad, even if it is aimed at douches like Sony.”

“To me, a hacker is just somebody with a set of skills; hacker is to computer as plumber is to pipes. And the same ethics should apply, if you want to mess with the pipes in your own house, go for it. But don’t go breaking into people’s houses and messing with their pipes.”

“To the perpetrator, two things. You are clearly talented and will have plenty of money (or a jail sentence and bankruptcy) coming to you in the future. Don’t be a dick and sell people’s information. And I’d love to see a write up on how it all went down…”

 Epilogue

• Who’s fault is it?
  

Is it Sony’s fault? According to George Hotz, it is.

“I bet Sony’s arrogance and misunderstanding of ownership put them in this position. (…) Notice it’s only PSN that gave away all your personal data, not Xbox Live when the 360 was hacked, not iTunes when the iPhone was jailbroken, and not GMail when Android was rooted. Because other companies aren’t crazy.”

If they hadn’t sued George Hotz, maybe nothing would have happened… Who knows?

• Who did it?

Who knows who did it, except the hacker himself? Maybe it was some Anonymous who did it without the agreement of the group, confess a member to the Financial Times :

“So it’s Anon’s work. But you can’t blame the whole collective for what one or two guys do. “

It could also have been George Hotz under the name of Anonymous… It can also be someone who is not an Anonymous and who doesn’t care about the case of George Hotz. Fingers are really pointed in all directions.

• And now?

What about the PlayStation Network and the million of players worldwide? We still don’t know when the PlayStation Network will be available again. On the PlayStation Blog, the “exact date” of the restoration is not yet known.