An example of “bad behavior” online would be when the Playstation network was hacked. On April 4th, 2011 a hacker group called Anonymous took down Sony’s Playstation network with a DDoS attack. Anonymous sent a message to Sony claiming that they did this attack as a form of retaliation after Sony took legal action against George Hotz and Alexander Igorrenknov (fellow hackers). In Anonymous’ message to Sony they say “You have now abused the judicial system in an attempt to censor information on how your products work. You have victimized 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. This is the information they were willing to teach to the world for free. The very same information you wish to suppress for sake of corporate greed and complete control of the users. Now you will experience the wrath of Anonymous”(Garcia, 2021). Anonymous attacked Sony until April 7th, when they realised that their attack wasn’t having the desired effects. The attacks harmed customers more than it harmed Sony. However, on April 19th the Playstation network was down again. This was because Sony had turned the servers offline. The servers had been shut down for over a week. Because of this, Sony had to admit that there had been a security breach (seperate from anonymous) that affected 77 million users. Users name, address, country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network password and login, and PSN Online ID, all had been accessed because of a cyberattack. The Playstation Network continued to experience cyber attacks until June, 2011. The frequent cyberattacks definitely damaged Sony’s reputation and led to some users switching to other consoles like the Xbox. In total the Playstation Network attacks cost Sony about $170 million. In the end the criminals were not held responsible for the Playstation Network attacks. This is because, although there are theories, no one actually knows who committed the attacks. Something we can learn from this incident is to be more careful with the information we give to large companies. Also, even though Sony’s network was breached many times, they didn’t take any action to prevent breaches from happening again. We can learn from that by taking steps to protect and encrypt private information.

References:

Garcia, Diamond M. (2021). The 2011 PlayStation Network Hack – What Actually Happened?. Wsswired. https://wsswired.com/4837/entertainment-3/the-2011-playstation-network-hack-what-actually-happened/

Tassi, Paul. (2011). Sony Pegs PSN Attack Costs at $170 Million, $3.1B Total Loss for 2011. forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/05/23/sony-pegs-psn-attack-costs-at-170-million/?sh=309505c344ca