Sony PSN to be restored in Japan this week

Sony have been in the spotlight for some time now, for all the wrong reasons. But the latest news is positive for the Japanese Playstation fans who have been unable to access the network service in the last two and a half months.

As many regular readers will already be aware, Sony have been hit hard in recent months by several hacking groups, who not only targeted their PSN, but many aspects of their business in various parts of the world. Kitguru has recorded many of these events which you can read here.

Japanese Sony gamers will be able to access the Playstation Store and Qriocity services from July 6th, according to a release by Sony today. Both of these popular services were suspended on April 20th when Sony detected an intrusion. Reports in later weeks showed that hackers broke through three firewalls and stole data on many millions of accounts. Passwords, user names, email addresses were all compromised. On a more positive note it appears that no credit card information has been used illegally to date, according to Sony anyway.

Sony have been reinstating services in various parts of the world in stages. Japan have been left to the last as Sony have had to discuss data breaches with authorities and have briefed them on new security systems, said Satoshi Fukuoka, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment in Tokyo.

Kitguru says: So far it is claimed that Sony have lost $170 million this financial year due to the attack and Sony's subsequent slow response. The total amount will be much higher however as the ramifications of the attacks continue.

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