Feldon 
File this under “WTF?”
The script kiddies who have been DDoSing Blizzard, League of Legends, PlayStation Network, and Sony Online Entertainment since early this morning decided to double down on their slew of felonies by tweeting a bomb threat for the American Airlines flight carrying SOE President John Smedley to San Diego. The flight was subsequently rerouted to Phoenix, AZ. The details of this “If I didn’t read it, I wouldn’t believe it” nonsense comes to us via Polygon:
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.
An American Airlines spokesperson confirmed to The Arizona Republic that Flight 362 was diverted for security reasons.
Earlier this afternoon, the hacker group that says it brought down PSN tweeted this threat to American Airlines’ account. A tweet since taken down also contained an 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 (screenshot above) show American Airlines Flight 362 being diverted from its path to San Diego into Phoenix. The flight is carrying 179 passengers and six crew. It departed Phoenix for San Diego at 1 pm ET, according to American Airlines.
Smedley earlier today mentioned he was flying from Dallas back to San Diego; SOE has significant operations in both areas.
The story has also been picked up by Joystiq.
Seriously? Do these people really have nothing better to do?
With any luck, perhaps now the FBI and other agencies might get serious about these morons. But, I’m guessing not.
Isn’t that a federal offence?
indeed, this group crossed a line it probably should not of crossed.
Considering they just made a terroristic threat on an airline, yeah they are going to get the feds coming down on them like a ton of bricks.
DHS isn’t exactly known for its sense of humor. Feds w/ SWAT gear “knocking” on the door in 3…2…1…
Yeah the indictment if and when they are caught should be pretty lengthy…seriously these fools need to grow up get a life and move out of their parents basement.
P.S. They may also get an all expense paid extended stay at beautiful club gitmo….just saying.
this was just on the NBC Today show this morning.
Here the link to the video:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lizard-hackers-force-sony-execs-flight-divert-n188206
Fixed the embed. Guests can’t post HTML or JS for security reasons.
i really wish people would think twice before posting sensitive information on twitter or facebook. stuff like where you are, what flight you are on, where you are going – should all be kept private. You shouldn’t post that if you are a regular person like most of us. it becomes even more important to protect your privacy when you are a public figure or the head of a big company like SOE. I guess people don’t think, but it should be common sense not to share such information.
Couldn’t disagree more and don’t appreciate being called stupid.
Didn’t they have a copy of the actual airplane ticket? Maybe I heard wrong.
I heard that too. His eticket.
Bomb threat made it go to homeland security for prosecution….and if they aren’t based in the US could be far more serious. I hope they catch them, not specifically because it’s Smed…but because someone thought it was funny. Would love to not hear about them being water boarded just…well…because….it’s fun. 🙂
I DO wonder how they came up with Smed as target, however. SOE isn’t really THAT big in the fortune 500 sense, and he’s not even the chief over all that is PSN. I expect picking him as a target will be one of the keys that leads investigators to the person/group.
Could be he was the only one they could get that info for.
Yeah that’s exactly what I’m thinking. Out of all of the Sony Computer Entertainment Subsidiaries, they go after SoE’s President John Smedley. You would think that they would go after targets higher on the food chain like Kaz Hirai.
You know I just realized, this incident probably gave more public publicity to SoE then what they spent in the entirety of their PR budget in the past 10 years.
Maybe this was all a deranged EQ_ fan’s desperate plot to help rejuvenate the franchise.