Hacker Threat Diverts Flight Carrying Sony Online President

[dead.cell]

Hacker Threat Diverts Flight Carrying Sony Online President

 

The hacker group claiming responsibility for today's PlayStation Network outage sent a bomb threat, via Twitter, about an American Airlines flight carrying Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley. Smedley has confirmed he is on the flight and that it was diverted for security reasons.

 

"Something about security and our cargo. Sitting on Tarmac," Smedley tweeted. Polygon has reached out to representatives of Sony Computer Entertainment America, SOE and the Phoenix office of the FBI for additional comment.

 

An American Airlines spokesperson confirmed to The Arizona Republic that Flight 362 was diverted for security reasons. KPNX-TV also reported the FBI was investigating the threat.

 

Earlier this afternoon, the hacker group that says it brought down PSN tweeted this threat to American Airlines' account. A tweet while the flight was airborne (and since taken down) also contained a link to this image appearing to show an e-Ticket for Smedley's flight, with a confirmation number, asking Smedley and Sony if this was indeed his flight. The hackers continued to tweet threats about the flight.

 

Both American's flight tracker and FlightAware.com show American Airlines Flight 362 being diverted from its path to San Diego into Phoenix. The flight is carrying 179 passengers and six crew.

 

Smedley earlier today mentioned he was flying from Dallas back to San Diego; SOE has significant operations in both areas.

Polygon

 

Not sure the weight of this story, but whatever they have against Sony is their problem.

 

However, some of these actions are turning borderline terrorist-like in nature, if true...

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Absolutely pathetic, truly. Lives will be ruined over this nonsense.

[Vandalsquad]

How the hell did they know what flight the Sony president was on? The jail time just jumped quite a lot for this stunt compared to just the DDoS.

[123456789A]

wtf is wrong with people these days? Like how do you even come up with such a stupid idea in the first place?

[.Ruby]

Why is Sony getting this kind of attention lately? I haven't read up on anything that might have triggered a reaction such as this.

[Mr. Gibs]

Why is Sony getting this kind of attention lately? I haven't read up on anything that might have triggered a reaction such as this.

It's not just Sony. They've been DDoSing a TON of online services, though this is a first for them.

Runescape, Guild Wars, League of Legends, WoW, PSN, Xbox Live have all been DDoSed this past week. It's pathetic and I can't think of what they gain from doing this. Get a life you morons.

[Brendeth]

Couldn't they just put their time to better use and disrupt the actions of terrorists and corrupt governments, you know things that actually affect people?

[GotBored]

I don't think the Lizard Squad kid was behind the DDoS, he just took the opportunity to gain his 5 mins of fame.. It then went to his head and he went overboard with this flight threat.

 

I went to his twitter page when gaming sites started to post the stories about him and he had some very odd things to say.. but he also seemed to be a fan of Xbox and said he wasn't going to hit Xbox Live but then Xbox Live went down so I'm guessing whoever targeted the others also went for Xbox rather than this not-quite-right kid.

[dead.cell]

It then went to his head and he went overboard with this flight threat.

 

No kidding, there are serious repercussions for these types of actions.

 

"Federal authorities do not take kindly to airplane bomb threats, as you might imagine. 

Last year, former United flight attendant Patrick Cau was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined over $300,000 after a series of bomb hoaxes."

 

ArsTechnica just posted about it today with more depth to the story.

 

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/american-air-flight-diverted-after-gaming-hacker-group-tweets-bomb-threat/