One of the detainees, a 31 year old man, was apprehended in the southern city of Almeria sometime after May 18th, according to the police. There was a server in his apartment in the northern port city of Gijon from which they believe Anonymous attacked the Web sites of the Sony Playstation online gaming store.

They’ve also stated that the same computer was also employed in coordinated hacks against two Spanish banks, BBVA and Bankia, as well the Italian energy company Enel. Government sites in Spain, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand were also attacked using this server, the police claim.

This investigation was opened last October after the attack on the Spanish Ministry of Culture’s Web site in protest against Spanish legislation increasing punishments for illegal downloads.

The other two suspects were apprehended in Barcelona and Valencia, respectively. Unfortunately, the police’s statement did not state the timing of these arrests clearly nor did it mention whether any of the three arrested were still being detained. They were, however, expected to be charged with forming an illegal association to attack public and corporate web sites. The charged group members could face up to three years in prison if found guilty.

It is clear that Anonymous has not been the sole perpetrator of the attacks against Sony. About a dozen of Sony’s web sites and services around the world have been hacked and, as the public is well aware, the largest breach caused the PSN Network to be completely shut down for close to a month and compromised the sensitive information of countless users. While Anonymous and other “hactivist” groups have cheerfully advertised their responsibility for some of the attacks, no one has come forward to claim the PSN attack that cost Sony so much downtime. LulzSec has even been quiet on that score and they have not been shy about proclaiming to the world whenever they’ve successfully caught a corporation with its proverbial pants down.

Sony has estimated that the combined attacks will cost it about $173 million in damages, including legal costs, lower sales and free offers to lure back customers and information technology spending. Mami Imada, a spokeswoman for Sony in Tokyo, told the press that she had no information regarding the arrests made in Spain and declined further comment on behalf of the company.

The attacks by Anonymous members were accomplished by making use of a computer program called LOIC to crash Web sites by flooding them with “denial-of-service” attacks, according to police. They know this because, since October, they’ve been analyzing more than two million lines of chat logs and Web pages used by the group. This also allowed them to identify the leadership in Spain that had the capacity to “make decisions and direct attacks.”

Among recent attacks, “hactivists” also brought down the site of the Spanish National Electoral Commission last month, right before regional and municipal elections. It was that attack, on May 18th, that proved to be a fatal step for the 31 year old team member as it led to the arrest in Almeria.

It’s clear that this year might very well end up the year of the hackers. It leads those of us who use computers regularly, and that would be the great majority of us, to wonder what’s really going on and how safe our data is in the cloud. Even data stored by respected companies like Sony or banks does not seem to be safe in these times.

How do you react when a site that you are a user of gets hacked?

Yesterday Sony revealed additional information, and boy does it look back. Information about the situation are provided to all customers of the service in an email.

The email speaks of an “illegal and unauthorized intrusion” in which certain “service user account information” were stolen by the attackers.

The important part follows with a list of information that have been stolen. This includes:

name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity passwords and login, and handle/PSN online ID.

Please note that the email address, login and passwords have been stolen. This is likely going to turn ugly considering that many users on the web use the same email and password combination on a lot of sites.

If you are a customer of PSN or Qriocity you need to immediately change your passwords on site where you may have used the same password, and on your email account.

Sony furthermore says that it is possible that profile data may have also been obtained by the attackers, which would include purchase history and billing address. Even worse, they cannot eliminate the possibility that created card data was taken as well.

That’s the worst case scenario, and there is not lot that users of the network can do at this time, but to actively monitor their credit card bills to check for unauthorized payments.

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant to review your account statements and to monitor your credit or similar types of reports.

The data stolen could also be used in custom attacks as the attackers could use the user’s name and other information to make requests look legit.

Sony asks all users to change their PSN passwords as soon as the service goes online again.

A frequently asked questions section has been uploaded to the Playstation website which contains further information and support phone numbers.

To paraphrase: PSN users need to change their web account passwords immediately, especially if they are identical to their PSN password. They also need to change the password of their email accounts if identical, and need to monitor their credit card statements and account statements to make sure that no unauthorized payments are made from the accounts.

Since the hack has been first noticed on April 17, it is advised to look at your account statements for April to see if you find any unauthorized payments.

Sony is still investigating the issue at this point in time. The hack is a marketing fiasco for Sony, and more than a nuisance for customers of the service who now have to fear that their data gets abused by the hacker.

With 70 million users, the data alone could be worth a fortune on the black market. Spammers would love to get their hands on email addresses, names and countries for instance to send out personalized spam to those users.

You also need some screwdrivers to open the Playstation 3, please note that opening the PS3 will void the warranty.

• The first step is to find the HDD Bay on your Playstation 3. It is located on the left side of the console, and it is marked with HDD. Easy enough. Use your flat head screwdriver to pop off the plastic cover. You now have access to the actual HDD caddy.

• The next step is to remove the blue screw that holds the HDD caddy in place using the Phillips head screwdriver. Once you have done so, flip up the metal handle that is on the front of the caddy, and slide the HDD towards the FRONT of the Playstation 3 to dislodge it. Once you have done so you can remove the HDD tray.
• Once you have access to the tray outside the PS3, you can take out the 4 screws which hold the original Playstation 3 HDD in place, and swap in your new 2.5MM SATA Notebook HDD.
• Once the new HDD is secured in the HDD caddy, you need to place the caddy back inside the PS3 unit, and slide it toward the REAR of the console to lock it in place. Once you have done so, the final step is to use your Phillips head screwdriver to replace the blue screw which anchors the HDD caddy to the Playstation 3. Pop on the plastic cover, and boot up the console.
• As soon as you boot up the console, the PS3 will detect that the HDD is not formatted, and it will ask you if you would like to format. You must select yes twice, because they want you to be sure that you realize you will be destroying all the data. Of course, you pick yes.
• Once the HDD is formatted, which takes less than 2 minutes, the unit will ask you to reboot. Once you have done so, you can do into the settings menu option in the PS3 OS. Then choose system settings, and then finally system information. There you will see a display of the HDD space on your console. If you have done everything correctly, you will see that the HDD space now reflects the amount of space on the replacement drive. Keep in mind, about 15 to 20 GB of space will be taken up by the PS3 for system use, so do not be alarmed when the HDD space measurement comes up short.
• To answer your question before you ask, the only thing that gets erased is game saves. Your network ID info, your console settings, and even the 1.10 update all remain in place when you do this HDD swap. Neat eh?

Please note that this text has been directly taken from the GamersReports website, please note that they also added pictures to the article, so pay them a visit. (page 1, page 2)

This is by far the craziest launch I ever witnessed. How far do people go for a gaming machine ? I decided to collect the most interesting articles in the categories Crimes, Hardware and Games. Please add your links if you want to join the fun.

Crimes:

Man shoot waiting to buy Playstation 3
PS3 Fight shuts down Walmart
PS3 Riot
Texas Gamestop Robbed at Gun-Point

Hardware:

One Man’s HDMI Issues
PS3 dead on arrival
PS3′s disc loaders defective ?
PS3 does not do 1080i ?

Ratings:

Gundam – 2 of 10
NBA 07 – 4.9
Resistance 9.3