Anonymous members 'likely' behind PSN attack - Report

In a letter sent to the US Congress on Wednesday, Sony Corp. executive vice president Kaz Hirai implicated members of the "hacktivist" collective Anonymous in the cyberattack that brought down the PlayStation Network. The following day, the group sent out a press release saying that any inquiry into the matter would prove the organization is innocent in the data breach, which led to the leak of some 77 million PSN users' personal information, as well as that of Sony Online Entertainment's user base.

Now, two individuals claiming to be "veteran" members of Anonymous are singing a different tune. Speaking to the Financial Times, the pair say that the people behind the information theft were almost certainly elements of the collective engaged in an anti-Sony crusade dubbed "OpSony."

"The hacker that did this was supporting OpSony's movements," one unnamed Anonymous member told the Times.

"Kayla," another member, went even further, saying, "If you say you are Anonymous, and do something as Anonymous, then Anonymous did it. Just because the rest of Anonymous might not agree with it, doesn't mean Anonymous didn't do it."

OpSony began in early April as a response to Sony's legal action against PlayStation 3 hacker George "GeoHot" Hotz. Anonymous then engaged in a series of denial-of-service attacks on a variety of Sony sites, leading to some instability.

Some 11 days later, the PlayStation Network suffered a data breach between April 17 and 19, which led to Sony taking the online service offline. In a press release several days later, Anonymous denied the organization had sanctioned the attacks.

As of Friday, the PSN remained down, although Sony said Thursday it is engaged in "final testing" for it to resume operations soon.