Sony has spent $171 million trying to fix security breaches on its PlayStation network, CBS News reports. And yet, for all the work done and the money spent, the network still isn’t secure as hacker attacks on the popular gaming network have shown this week.
The cost includes identity theft insurance for customers, improvements to network security, free access to content, customer support and an investigation into the hacking.
Sony Corp. is expecting an annual loss of $3.2 billion after also seeing plunging sales of flat-panel TVs and other gadgets.
Restored operations for PSN have begun in the United States and Europe. But for now those services are limited to online gaming, chat and music streaming.
Sony said it aims to fully restore the PlayStation Network by the end of May.
PSN is a system that links gamers worldwide in live play. Sony shut it down on April 20 after discovering a hacker attack.
Sony said personal data, including credit card numbers, may have been stolen. But the company has said it has not received any reports of the stolen information being used illegally.
Sony announced that the network was coming back on-line ten days ago. And in that time, there have been three minor security breaches in the network.
The relative ease with which hackers were able pull off the most recent intrusions is surprising, given the heightened attention to security at Sony since the widely publicized PSN hack.
“The original attacks [on the PlayStation Network and Online Entertainment networks] were probably quite targeted and quite skilled,” said Chester Wisniewski, senior security adviser at security firm Sophos. “Now it seems to be that every random hacker out there has jumped on the bandwagon” to attack Sony.
Leave a Reply