Dear Sony, it probably wasn't Anonymous!

I have a new one-liner axiom, a net-net for our age:

"Google makes us all geniuses."                                             Rick Bennett, 10 May 2011

As you might surmise from my recent blogs, I've been extremely curious about the plight of Sony. The extreme invective oozing out of the comments accompanying every single news article about the PSN outage and the news about future attacks on Sony got me curious. There's more at work here than just a bunch of adolescents looking for an excuse to go on a spray painting binge. And as much as one might disagree with the tactics of the Anonymous crew, they'd have no reason to lie about their non-involvement in the continuing Sony debacle. If they were indeed behind it, they'd be bragging. So what other hypotheses might be considered and tested?

Thanks to Google, all things are pretty well public (sorry Bing and Yahoo!, I just don't see a reason to spend much time with you). Keeping it simple, my first Google search gave me what I consider to be a high-probability answer (in the AI world, we call this "fuzzy logic"). Try it yourself. No quotes are needed. Just three Google search words:

Sony SOE layoff

After all, a sophisticated root-kit attack is most often an inside job. My hypothesis was that one or more ex-Sony SOE employees might be yea verily unhappy. Make sense? Well, looking at the second result, it makes sense to me. Here's the search image just as I found it:

And the second link kind of says it all. The news came out on March 30th that SOE laid off about a third of its workforce. They also closed three studios. Like I said yesterday, "Oh golly Miss Molly!" Of course, there are a lot of hits on that particular three-word query, and I suggest the curious amongst you read a few of the stories. Especially the reader comments. As it became obvious to me, the gamer community sure does take this little universe seriously! In fact, the invective—the trash talk directed not only at Sony but at other commenters deemed guilty of even minor etiquette infractions and flamed accordingly—make the fist fights in third-world parliaments seem mild.

Since Sony management must be aware of their internal dynamics far more thoroughly that I am, I wonder at their publicly naming Anonymous as the prime suspect in their witch hunt. My guess is that their statements are a misdirection, designed to let them track down the real culprit(s).

Again, my advice to sony is, "Call Larry Ellison." You've got a war on your hands and you'd jolly well better have your best and brightest on the front lines. So far, you're still flailing. Not to mention that you're continuing to irritate your customer base, which unfortunately, is so filled with adolescent testosterone that they need to be enlisted as insiders. Hopefully, you have a therapist on your staff who can help you design the appropriate vehicle. Hint: the vehicle needs to have a BFG your customers can play with.