Yar! Ahoy, mateys.
It’s time to batten down the hatches, shiver me timbers and drink some rum.
A pirate’s life be what for me.
Now it may not be this type o’ pirate lurking around ye everyday, but pirates are still hunting for ye booty, even right now — on the Internet.
Aside from the trivial form of piracy concerning music and movies, hackers are constantly working to provide people access to devices in ways other than the manufacturer may have intended.
Last summer, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals deemed it legal for users to “jailbreak” their iPhones, allowing many more customization options and features than provided by Apple.
Hackers have gone on to “jailbreak” (or “root”) many more things, such as other smartphones, operating systems, etc.
However, one hacker got more than he bargained for at the beginning of this year by releasing the root key for Sony’s PlayStation 3.
The root key lets users openly manipulate their PlayStation 3, allowing any unsigned code to run on the system.
Sony didn’t take too kindly to hacker George “Geohot” Hotz and his new finding.
In fact, Sony officially sued Geohot and “fail0verflow” (who released development tools for rooted PS3s) and demanded restraining orders.
Sony even went as far as to obtain the IP addresses of all the people visiting Geohot’s site for the root key.
After months of fighting, Sony and Geohot finally settled out of court Monday with the hacker agreeing not to post source codes, hacking tips or anything else that will help circumvent the PS3’s security, according to gaming site Destructoid.
While that’s all fine and well, the real news comes from last week when multiple Sony websites and the PlayStation Network mysteriously crashed.
Sony blamed “sporadic maintenance,” but the real cause comes from Internet group “Anonymous.”
Anonymous was originally an Internet meme created in 2003 on the website 4chan. The meme took off, representing an online community of members existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain — kind of like a modernized Project Mayhem from “Fight Club.”
After Sony refused to relinquish pressure on Geohot, Anonymous declared an all-out war on the tech giant. A member of Anonymous came out on an Internet forum and attributed the crashes to the group.
It started with crashing the aforementioned Sony sites but then led to something a bit more extreme.
Within hours of “declaring war,” members of Anonymous obtained the personal information of many Sony executives including Sony Computer Entertainment America President and CEO Jack Tretton.
Simply through a bit of thorough research and manipulation of people, a member of Anonymous learned of Tretton’s home address by seeing if he ordered flowers for his wife on Valentine’s Day.
After ordering a bunch of pizzas to be delivered to Tretton’s house from “Anon Mous,” one of the members decided to call Tretton’s house as well, but was hung up on by Tretton’s wife.
Fortunately, it appears nothing malicious — aside from a large pizza bill — fell upon Tretton or any of the Sony executives.
But this “war” easily shows how public your “private” information is.
With the most trivial information — ordering flowers for his wife — people found someone’s address and phone number.
It’s definitely a scary thought.
Does that mean you should quit what you’re doing and hide from the Internet forever?
Of course not.
Just be sure to remember any information you put on the Internet — no matter how “private” you set it — is public information for everyone.
Now, where be me wenches? I have some more plundering to do. Yarrrrrrr!
Adam Arinder is a 21-year-old communication studies senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_aarinder.
 
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Contact Adam Arinder at [email protected]