Digital Top Stories

Sony says Anonymous attack contributed towards data breach

By | Published on Thursday 5 May 2011

Qriocity

Sony Corp yesterday blamed the online community Anonymous for last month’s data breach in which the personal information of over 100 million users of the PlayStation Network and Qriocity content-on-demand service was stolen. As previously reported, Sony admitted last week that the reason both services had gone offline somewhat suddenly the previous week was because of a major hack that had resulted in the theft of significant amounts of user data, likely including credit card information.

Sony isn’t saying that members of the Anonymous network stole the data, but that the online pressure group was staging one of those tedious Distributed Denial Of Service attacks against the Sony immediately before the big hack, and that it was because the company’s IT dudes were dealing with the DDoS attack that the data grab was able to happen through the back door.

It made the claim that Anonymous contributed towards the data breach in a letter to Congress yesterday, as the entertainment and electronics giant faces questions from US political types regarding its security systems and response to the data hack. Anonymous subsequently issued a lengthy statement admitting they were attacking Sony’s servers in the run up to the data grab, but added that as a group they has never been involved in credit card theft. They then waffled on for a while about how Sony and the FBI are evil, while everyone involved with Anonymous is brillz skillz.

Aside for the reputation hit Sony has taken as a result of the data hack, and the loss in revenues caused by having to take its networks down for over a week, the conglom may face greater costs if the data theft results in credit card fraud. One American web security analyst, Michael Pachter, told Billboard that Sony should have emailed all the users of its networks by now promising to indemnify them against any financial harm resulting from the data breach.

It’s a viewpoint that is likely to be supported by some in US Congress, meaning the pressure will only mount on Sony in the coming days to step up its response to the big hack.



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