Hacktivists target Sony

Sony is being targeted by hacktivist group Anonymous, a collection of politically motivated hackers.

Several Sony sites, including PlayStation Network, were offline at the time of writing.

The electronics giant angered Anonymous with its legal action against hackers George "Geohot" Hotz and Graf Chokolo after Hotz and Chokolo released the private key required to develop firmware for Sony's PlayStation 3 console.

The proceedings were described by Anonymous as "wholly unforgivable".

Calling the attack #OpSony, Anonymous said: "You have abused the judicial system in an attempt to censor information on how your products work. You have victimised your own customers merely for possessing and sharing information, and continue to target every person who seeks this information. In doing so you have violated the privacy of thousands.

"Now you will experience the wrath of Anonymous."

The group launched a series of actions under the banner Operation Payback last year, in which MasterCard, Visa, Amazon and PayPal were subjected to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Both the MasterCard and Visa web sites were temporarily brought offline by these actions.

Sony was unavailable for comment.