MSNBC: Sony Declines to Testify before Congress; $1 Billion Civilian Lawsuit Filed

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Uncategorized

From MSNBC.com:

A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee is demanding answers from Sony after private information from some 102 million personal accounts was taken by hackers.

In a letter written by the Congressional Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade and addressed to Sony chairman Kazuo Hirai, representatives asked the company to answer a list of 13 questions related to the hacking of Sony’s PlayStation Network.

The Congressional committee has demanded answers about the PlayStation Network breach only perhaps because news of the Sony Online Entertainment breach wasn’t released until Monday afternoon.

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Comments (18)

  • Jartal

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    Heh, soon as webpage is back up its bye bye EQ2. Disgraceful handling of the situation by Sony.

    Reply

  • Kruzzen

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    Lets see;

    Congressional Hearings
    Class Action Lawsuits
    Loss of revenue during outage
    Cost to make it up to the customers

    I think I see at least 3 Billion in damages now. Will Sony even be around after all that? Hope they have good insurance.

    Reply

  • Axeluis

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    It’s a valid comment. How many hits can one company take? People were complaining about server population PRIOR to all the hoopla. Confidence in the game etc. will be at an all time low for the near future. It’s amazing how things can change overnight for companies. At least I’m catching up on my Xbox 360 games.

    Reply

  • shimmerman

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    Look it was not all SOE fault here, I do not agree with a class action law suit nor do I believe that Congress has any right to put there big fat nose ion this situation,
    I do blame the hackers, they have compromised a game we all love and successfully been able to take the game away from us, so as far as I am concerned its those people we should be after, not SOE, however there is a degree of mismanagement and over-site that SOE does need to be accountable for, but does it come to the degree of lawsuits, I do not think so
    In short here, the information was stolen, not given, shared (like google and other websites you visit) Put on a 3rd tier database for others to buy from, so hunt them down, and drop them like osama, cause its hackers like them that are a national threat

    Reply

  • Betony

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    Amazon cloud loses data from customers permanently after promising secure storage. They take longer than Sony to apologise to clients. Congress? Are you asking questions?

    Apple follows you home and more. They laugh at the world with typical disdain.

    Health care patient and physician records including credit card information lost to hackers. No mention in media. Congress? Are you asking questions?

    Gamers get upset. Marketing data miners get really upset at the lost of historical data to post ads on pages you are browsing. Yep, you got it. Congress and House of Marketing gets really, really upset and starts asking questions.

    Proof in the pudding. Congress and House of Marketing play computer games all day.

    Reply

  • Kruzzen

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    I agree that it is not all SOE’s fault, but some of it is. But the dice have been cast and a major issue has been found. This is something that will have much father reaching issues than just SOE. It is things like this that cause new laws to be enacted like the sarbanes oxley act. The issue here was one not checking for security holes earlier. (For the class action suit this will be critical.) They will have to prove that there was no way for them to know that hole existed. If the lawyers find out they did know then it is gonna be really really bad.

    The law suit is for one thing, to pay for monitoring services for 2 years to protect consumers. Wether this is something that should be in a law suit is yet to be determined, but SOE is responsible for keeping sensitive data safe. And if paying for monitoring services because they did not put proper precautions in place is the result, then I don’t see that as a bad thing.

    I do agree that the hackers need to be taken down for this, but that may be easier said than done. As it is they have the FBI, congress, private contractors, etc, all trying to solve the issue. I think we are going to be reading about this case in the textbooks.

    Reply

  • Arabel

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    You can say the lawsuit is for one thing, but it is something Sony said they are doing on their own before the lawsuit was filed.

    Congress also has absolutely no place in this. A company was criminally violated, it can and will happen to any company in the world. Hell, it happens to the U.S. Government more then we’d care to find out. It happens to banks and stores all the time. Congress trying to grill Sony exec’s is nothing but politics and publicity and has no place here.

    Reply

  • Kruzzen

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    LOL, congress likes to stick its nose where it doesn’t belong. Even more so with the current administration. The only thing I think they need to answer is why it took them so long to do something on the PSN. I think that SOE did a good job in closing it down as soon as they found out.

    Reply

  • Gaball

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    Question is who are all those hackers.
    What superb company is with Sony in commercial compete? Major thing is PSN, PSN network have strong rival on market, richer and more powerfull than Sony is, rival what never had strong moral altitude. For who is EQ2 rival now, in those days – with less than 250000 subscribers? But Playstation is (or was?) strong player on stadium still …

    Reply

  • payingcustomer

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    We should all cancel our subscription.And have them provide us with something to win us back.plus i just got charged for 3 accounts.but wait i thought servers are down and card information supposed to be on lock down.so how could i get charged???even if it gets done from third party SOE u should have informed them to stop any transactions..
    And while the Servers are down, get the Servers all renewed.stop being cheap thats what got you in trouble in first place.
    I dont blame the hackers in no way.they where enforcing things that should have been done along time ago.
    27million customers lol.by 15$ per person they already made 405Million .and that is just if every person did the first month.so i dont feel sorry for them.Fork out fix and provide the service you been charging for years.

    Nuff said.

    Reply

  • Meilay

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    Yes, it’s disgraceful what happened, I mean, SONY a leader in the electronics and software market hacked, BUT let’s NOT forget that as we are victims of these hackers incursion, so is SONY. The “real” badguys here are the chukleheads that took it upon themselves to steal millions of accounts worth of information, the same ones that steal credit card numbers from other online purchases or even legitimate store purchases where there is an electronic transaction. These same persons are the ones responsible for the millions of dollars (or Billions) of lost/ repaid debts handed out by banks and other sources each year. Seriously, if these same persons had robbed the federal treasury, they would have made off with LESS and been tracked by EVERY resource available on 7 continents. Sony gets hacked, and instead we pin them up as the badguy, and instead of focusing our attention to where the threat is (the hackers) we will throw Sony on trial because it’s easier.

    Sony, as any good company would do, is looking for ways to “make ammends”, Sony didnt hold a gun to my head and make me sign up for thier services, though there is a degree of assuredness that my personal information they use to bill me should be safeguarded..always.

    Really, if Sony takes measures to fix an issues they have, thats between the consumer and the company. If a consumer has NO faith in the companies service, you don’t have a company anymore. As far as criminal charges etc.. / sigh – let’s focus on the real bad guys in my opinion.

    Reply

  • Shaden

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    As far as I can see, they’re going after Sony. Sony is a huge company with tons of revenue (they sell TVs and stuff). I doubt it will affect SOE and our games.

    Reply

  • Kruzzen

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    I would recommend people go read the letter to the congressional commitee. It answers a lot.

    Reply

  • Arabel

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    People keep saying I got charged while the servers are down. You clearly don’t watch your cards, because Sony (as well as lots of other companies with monthly subscription payments) puts a hold on that payment about a week prior to actually taking the money. In essence they tell your bank hey this person is going to us this money on this date, and the bank sets it aside.

    It isn’t a new charge since the servers have been down, it is one that was already scheduled prior.

    Reply

  • kozmic

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    what companies need to do is hire the hackers, it would prevent breaches and everything else thats going on. if the fbi is having a hard time finding whom ever is at fault, let the hackers do it i mean its what they do!!

    Reply

  • kozmic

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    also they said that they dont think that any credit cards are being used from the information that was stolen because the credit card companies havent had any high volume fraudulent charges or anything, but if whom ever is responsible is smart enough to do all the damage that has been done, then they are smart enough to wait until all the hype has died down before attempting to use any information that was obtained

    Reply

  • omgwtflol

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    @shimmerman umm let’s see we are talking about private information taken from “102 million accounts.” This is going down as one of the largest hackings in internet history. lol, if that doesn’t justify congressional involvement, I dont know what does.

    Reply

  • the gohibniu

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    The hackers fingers must be hacked off!

    Reply

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