Sony’s Hirai admits they were slow responding about PSN hack

Sony have said today that part of their PlayStation network will be back online this coming week. It has been a tough month for Sony, with over 70 million of their customers angry about personal details being stolen by hackers.

Insiders are claiming that Sony might be optimistic on their time scale, with some claiming that it could be a full month before they are able to perform a full reboot of the online media network.

Kazuo Hirai, Sony's deputy president finally spoke out offering an apology while bowing “I am deeply sorry for worrying, and inconveniencing, our users.” Many say this apology is too little, too late.

The security problems facing Sony have huge ramifications for the technology giant. Sony have already been struggling to keep up with Apple and the latest blows indicate that there are some serious loopholes with their security protocols. While the security issues are important, the public and press have been hammering Sony for a very slow public support system, not even instructing customers of the seriousness of the issues until many days later. It took them a full week to inform their user base that credit card information had been compromised. This hasn't been sitting well with many gamers and parents who have already cancelled credit cards, sold the console and ditched support for the company.

Sony's problems continue, as a subcommittee of the United States House Of Representatives have sent them a letter asking for detailed information about the attack, including when the intrusion occurred and if they know who is responsible for the attack and when the company notified law enforcement.

Sony claim that an ‘unauthorised person' hacked into their servers last month and obtained personal information on Playstation and Qriocity account holders including names, email addresses, physical addresses, user names, password and even possibly credit card information.

Sony warned customers to ‘remain vigilant' by monitoring identify theft and unauthorised credit card use. Sony said that usernames and passwords were NOT encrypted, but the credit card information it had for 10 million people had been encrypted and that there was no hard evidence to prove it had been taken.

Mr Hirai had no option but to admit that they were slow in providing information about the network breach to their customers. It had taken time for them to gather accurate data on the breach he said.

“Inspecting and analyzing a vast amount of data unfortunately took a lot of time,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that the information we provided was accurate as possible.”

Once the network is back up and running, customers will be forced to change their passwords before they can connect again. Sony are going to offer free content and other goodies as part of an ‘appreciation program'.

“Sony continues to place utmost priority on its network strategy,” Mr. Hirai said. “We intend to continue our global expansion.”

KitGuru says: Is all this enough to convince customers that Sony are now secure and genuinely concerned about their user base?

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