Who said anything about cracked PS3's or piracy? Do you really think this is about a few illegitimate dev channel members? You're right, those people probably aren't still mad at Sony. But most people can't run OtherOS and connect to PSN. It's much more likely that one of the many, many PS3 owners who can't are the ones behind this "intrusion".
I would bet money that it's related, yes. The asshattery perpetuated by geohot et al. lead directly to these sorts of things--that's the most likely way I can see for an attack that necessitates downing the service to fix it to be launched. They've compromised what were assumed to be trusted clients, which seems likely to be the vector for an attack this serious. (And to forestall the usual: from a technical perspective, obviously Sony shouldn't have trusted clients at all, but just because a window's open doesn't mean going through it isn't trespassing and taking things while you're there isn't theft.)
You poke the fate bear, the fate bear eats you. Unfortunately in this case, it's also chewing on my leg, too.
Trying to lump all hackers together is wrong on its face. Geohot had nothing to do with this, so bringing him up serves no purpose but to create false impressions and (unintentionally or not) shill for Sony.
I think GP meant publishing the signing keys for PS3 system code. That allowed the bad guys to sign any binary they wanted and authenticate the hacked PS3 to Sony's dev channels. Not really Geohot's intent, but certainly something he facilitated.
