Actually the hacking of Sony has a bit more of a backstory to it. Sony at some point had gone after a hacker named George Hotz who was doing some fairly benign hacking of the PS3. They used the one of the worst written laws around, DMCA, to go after him.
Sony v. Hotz: Controversies Regarding DMCA, Jurisdiction, Search Warrant and Subpoenas | Berkeley Technology Law Journal
This Clinton era law essentially makes it illegal to reverse engineer things that are "encrypted". This poorly written law in turn has been exploited by companies to prosecute hackers and other companies trying to make devices that requires reverse engineering. It essentially lets them lock out competition. Incidentally it's also exactly the kind of thing that Moto could use, if they desire, to go after people who write utilities to root their phones.
Anyway, I think it was mostly due to that action that brought the wrath of the hacker community against Sony. They in turn went after Sony and managed to get in and really do some damage. This definitely embarrassed Sony, their Playstation Network was out of commission, and people are now perhaps a little less trusting of Sony with CC numbers and so on.
I am not saying that taking out Sony like this was the right thing to do. Two wrongs don't make a right.
LulzSec definitely got some attention, but that's the thing about hackers. They got arrogant and themselves got hacked by a different hacker group. Not to mention they got a lot of attention - that community doesn't really seem to like attention like LulzSec drew.
Of course there are other kinds of hackers outside of the groups I mentioned - the kind who work for China government and the Russian mob are a different thing alltogether.