In a coordinated campaign of denial of service attacks called "OpSony," hacktivist group Anonymous has already started attacking Sony Web sites in retaliation for Sony's lawsuit against PS3 hackers. Now an Anonymous offshoot that calls itself "SonyRecon" has taken the attacks to the next level, targeting individual Sony employees.
After uncovering information from an OpSony message board, PlayStation Lifestyle revealed that these hackers are working together to gather personal information about "useful targets," including names, telephone numbers, home addresses, email, IP addresses, information about relatives, and more in order to harm these people, likely through fraud.
Sony employees could be attacked in many different ways. Some of the methods are as benign as prank calls to the target on Skype or sending them a large number of empty UPS boxes, but others are more serious. SonyRecon prompts hackers to post ads in the erotic services section of Craigslist or calling an AIDS hotline and asking for positive results for an HIV test to be delivered to the target.
According to PlayStation Lifestyle, SonyRecon's efforts have only started to heat up. However, the site confirmed that the group has already obtained the personal information of Sony employees and their families. In fact, a post on the message board also showed that SonyRecon is specifically looking for information on Sony CEO Howard Stringer and his family.
On Monday, Anonymous took on several Sony sites and rendered the PlayStation Network (PSN) inaccessible for most of the day. On Twitter, PlayStation would not confirm the attacks, but instead said that PSN was undergoing "sporadic maintenance."
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