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Showing posts with label PSN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PSN. Show all posts

Sony to restore PSN services, compensate customers

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11:30 pm

Two weeks since after Sony's PlayStation Network was hacked Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, addressed the issue in a press conference in Tokyo tonight.
Though they still don't know who orchestrated the intrusion on the PSN servers in San Diego, Calif., they were "very sophisticated," Hirai said. It's still not entirely clear what kind of data the hackers got their hands on, but he reiterated that they don't believe credit card data to have been taken and added that the company has received no complaints of identity theft or credit card fraud yet.
Most services will be restored "within the week," Hirai said. The first PSN services to come back online will be online game play for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable, the ability to play downloaded movies from PSN, and unexpired movie rentals through PSN and Qriocity and chat functionalities.
"We are aiming to restore full services including the PlayStation Store and purchasing features within the month," Hirai said.
The breach took place between April 17 and 19, but Sony didn't tell its 77 million customers until April 26 that their personal information, including names, addresses, e-mail addresses, birthdays, PlayStation Network and Qriocity passwords, and user names, as well as online user handles, had been obtained illegally by an "unauthorized person."
The company launched an investigation in conjunction with several security firms into the intrusion on its network and shut down PSN and Qriocity while it rebuilt the security system.
Only 10 million of the 70 million PSN accounts had credit cards attached to them, Hirai said.

PSN security

One of the chief complaints from customers is how long Sony took to inform them of the breach. Besides being sued by at least one person, Sony has also attracted the interest of the U.S. House of Representatives, the government of the city of Taipei, Taiwan, and the British and Canadian privacy authorities. All of them demanded answers from Sony about why it took so long to tell customers of the breach as well as how Sony would compensate them.
The company today explained how it would try to make it up to customers. Sony will provide free identity theft protection service and "will consider" helping customers who have to be issued new credit cards. Sony will also be offering free selected downloads, as well as 30 days of free PlayStation Plus service. Music Unlimited subscribers will also get free service for 30 days.
Sony also says it is also making some changes to enhance its security. It will create a new position of chief security information officer for Sony Computer Entertainment and is accelerating its already-planned move of data servers from San Diego to a different location with more enhanced system security, adding automated software monitoring and configuration management, enhancing data encryption, and implementing more firewalls, Hirai said.
Once the system comes back online, customers will have to download a software update that will require everyone to change their PSN and Qriocity passwords.
Hirai also mentioned the company's past brushes with the Internet hacker group Anonymous, though it is not believed to be involved in the attack that brought PSN down last week.
"We've also received attacks from the Internet group Anonymous, who in addition to taking the personal information of Sony top management, also publicized information about their families, their names, and schools, on the Internet and called for sit-in protests across the world," said Hirai. "These kinds of sequential attacks on the company may not be limited to Sony. And in addition to our own initiatives, we will work with law enforcement and related agencies to combat illegal intrusions and the safety of a networked society."
"Again we like to offer our deepest and sincere apologies for potentially compromising customer data as well as causing great concern and making services unavailable for an extended period of time," he added.
Hirai's profile has been raised of late. Besides tonight's PSN press conference, he also introduced Sony's new tablets at a media event earlier this week. Hirai has risen up through the ranks and recently was mentioned by Howard Stringer, Sony's current chairman and CEO, as his possible replacement when he retires.
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Location: Malad East, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Sony's missteps through the years

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4:48 pm
Sony is a venerable name in the world of consumer electronics. This is, after all, the company that invented the CD, the Walkman, the Blu-ray Disc, and has made a deep impression on the tech world and mainstream culture.
That's why when Sony screws up--something a company is apt to do every now and again while in business more than half a century--it's notable. Sometimes it's a singular event, other times it's a product with high expectations that ends up being a dud.
The latest mistake, the hacking of PlayStation Network customers' personal data, is a big one, though when put in the context of past events, it may not actually be the worst thing ever to befall Sony.
In light of the latest misstep this week, we've rounded up some of Sony's most memorable blunders. Did we forget any? Leave them in the comments below.
PSN Hack
Anyone can be the target of a malicious hacking on the Web, but when it's a company like Sony, and 75 million names, e-mail addresses, birth dates, and addresses are at stake, it's big news.
Sony still hasn't said who hacked into its PlayStation Network and got access to the personal data of its customers, but it has said it's fairly sure credit card numbers were not exposed.
Sony's PS3
(Credit: Sony)
Still, what's angered most customers has been the lack of communication from the company--it took Sony a week after finding out about the security breach to inform customers--and the revelation that names, e-mail addresses, birth dates, and passwords were not encrypted.
Sony has still not said how it plans to compensate customers. At least one has an idea: an Alabama man is suing the company for free credit reporting services, as well as monetary damages for having his personal information illegally accessed.
Rootkit Scandal 
Sony got into trouble in November 2005 when it was discovered that the company used a rootkit on music CDs to limit the number of copies a person could make of the CD and to prevent making MP3 files from the music.
The rootkit was a bad idea for several reasons. It hid from the user the fact that Sony had placed this copy protection, it sent information about the CD being played to Sony, and it had a loophole that a hacker could use to hide a virus that could take over someone's computer. There was also no easy way to uninstall it.
As far as betraying customers' trust goes, that's pretty high up there on the list of things that are hard to recover from.
Faulty Lithium-ion batteries
Just a year later, another controversy exploded. Literally. Though Sony is a relatively small player in selling PCs, it does a big business selling laptop batteries to basically all of its competitors.
In the summer of 2006, reports of laptops smoking or bursting into flames began to crop up. Turns out a pretty big batch of Sony's lithium-ion batteries, which all the flaming laptops were using, were defective. The problem came to light when Dell was forced to recall more than 4 million laptop batteries made by Sony. Eventually Apple issued a recall for 1.8 million notebook batteries, as did Gateway (now part of Acer), Toshiba, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and obviously Sony itself.
Original PS3: late and expensive
Though it's a certifiable hit today--obviously the PSN story wouldn't have quite the impact if there weren't legions of customers--you might recall that when the PlayStation 3 finally hit store shelves, it did so under a cloud. It was delivered months later than originally planned, and by the time it was available, a cheaper Xbox had beaten it to market.
At $599, the 60GB PS3 was expensive--and Sony was said to be losing a lot of money on the console. Plenty of people lined up for it, but at first it was to cash in on the limited availability and resell the gadgets at insane prices. Many first customers who were avid PlayStation gamers were sorely disappointed by the lack of backward compatibility between the PS3 and many original PlayStation and PS2 games--a lack made worse by what these people saw as a dearth of compelling PS3 titles.
Failure to Connect
Sony's first attempt to build an iTunes competitor, known as Connect, did not go well. Begun in 2005, the 14-month-long project was, as one Sony insider put it, an unmitigated disaster. Because no one was happy with the final product, it was never set for official release in the U.S.--only Europe and Japan. Connect also highlighted the deep disconnects between the different silos within the company--a problem Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer is still working to rectify.
Addiction to proprietary formats
This one is an ongoing problem for Sony: the company's insistence on using proprietary formats in its electronics. Sony is obviously not the only company to use proprietary technology, but Sony has been around for so long that the pattern has become apparent.
The Wi-Fi enabled DSC-G3 camera.For example, when it originally debuted, the PlayStation Portable came with a new format for portable games: UMD (universal media disc). Not a terrible move. But Sony stumbled when it then tried to push UMD as a new way of buying movie content. While UMD had enough storage to hold a video game, it wasn't big enough to compete with the amount of content a studio could squeeze onto a DVD. You also couldn't write to the disc to copy your own content onto it, and there was no way of outputting the video to a television.
Eventually most movie studios declined to re-up their participation in UMD, and when the updated PSP was released in 2009 Sony ditched the format altogether.
Other proprietary formats, like Memory Stick (Sony's version of an SD card), seemed like a way to boost one Sony business (storage) with another (requiring it for use in cameras or portable devices). It didn't make nearly the headway that SD cards did. Sony finally threw up the white flag on that battle at CES 2010 when it announced its cameras would accept SD cards in addition to Memory Stick, and even that Sony would manufacture SD cards itself.
The Wi-Fi enabled DSC-G3 camera
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
For more format losers, see also HiFD ("the floppy disk of the 21st century!") and Blu-spec CD (what is that, you ask? Exactly).
Great specs, lousy implementation: the Wi-Fi camera
The Cybershot DSC-G3 Wi-Fi camera was the centerpiece of Sony's camera marketing bonanza at CES 2009, but it's largely now considered a dud. True, we here at CNET awarded the 10-megapixel, 4X zoom G3 the Best of CES award in the camera category that year, based on its impressive specs and Wi-Fi access that purported to allow easy wireless uploading of photos directly to the Web.
But the $499 price point, combined with the lack of 3G and only Wi-Fi, meant there wasn't always a guarantee you'd be within range of a connection that would let you upload your pictures. Plus the actual experience of using the Wi-Fi feature was a disappointment. So while it was a product packed with arguably great specs, it hasn't by any means caught on with customers.
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Location: Malad East, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Five questions for Sony about PSN breach

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7:24 am
After a week of PlayStation users wondering why they couldn't access PlayStation Network, Sony dropped the bomb yesterday: someone had gained access illegally to the personal information of more than 75 million of its users, forcing the company to shut down PlayStation Network and rebuild it, along with the related media download service Qriocity.
Sony had issued a few brief updates late last week and over the weekend acknowledging the service's outage and then an "external intrusion," but it didn't explain the consequences until yesterday.
The information exposed includes customer names; addresses; e-mail addresses; birthdays; PlayStation Network and Qriocity passwords and usernames; as well as online user handles. Sony says there is "no evidence" that credit card information was compromised, but the company advised customers to monitor their credit cards for erroneous charges anyway.
Making matters worse for customers nervous about their personal information being in the hands of someone who shouldn't have it, the service will continue to be unavailable for at least another week. And until then users have no way of resetting their password, or deleting their credit card information. Customers are, understandably, apoplectic.
So while Sony has (finally) given us useful information about the breach, there are still some big questions the company needs to answer. Here's what we'd still like to know.
Who did this and how were they able to access our information?
It's fairly basic, but it's the question on everyone's mind. How was anyone able to worm their way inside Sony's system? Was the security that poor? And even though someone was able to get the data, were our names, birthdates, addresses, and passwords not encrypted?
In regard to who did this, Sony's statement yesterday used the singular when describing the breach as being the work of "an unauthorized person." One person was able to do a lot of damage.
The company has said it is basically rebuilding its PlayStation Network from the ground up to beef up security. Without more answers, all of this calls into question Sony's security and whether the company can be trusted with this type of information again.
Why did it take a week to inform customers their credit card information may have been exposed?
Sony has told us the company found out on April 19, a Tuesday, that someone had accessed user information on PSN. The company did not inform the 75 million registered users of PSN and Qriocity that their personal information had been exposed until April 26, the following Tuesday. Customers are understandably angry, and some are even suing.
Sony did offer this explanation late Tuesday night: When the company found out on April 19 about the hack, it hired a private security firm to do a "forensic analysis" to figure out what, if any personal data, had been stolen or exposed.
But a week is a long time. If the company was even thinking that personal information, and especially credit card information, was in the hands of someone illegally, customers would obviously want to know.
Most states have laws that require companies to notify customers when sensitive personal information has been exposed, including social security numbers and credit card numbers, which could be used for financial and identity fraud. But since Sony has said it "has no evidence" that credit card information was exposed, it doesn't appear the company has violated any state laws by waiting to tell customers.
The timing of Sony's informing its customers has also attracted the attention of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who yesterday wrote a letter to Jack Tretton, president and chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, saying he was troubled that the company had not notified customers sooner about the breach. He also called for Sony to provide affected customers with financial data security services, including free access to credit reporting services for two years to protect against identity theft.
Have you contacted law enforcement?
The company has so far refused to answer this question. In response to a query from CNET, Sony issued this statement: "To ensure the confidentiality and effectiveness of this investigation, we cannot discuss details at this time."
How is Sony compensating customers?
While it's free to sign up for PlayStation Network, much of the content that can be downloaded requires a separate subscription to use, and every day that customers can't access that content, they're essentially losing money for something they've prepaid for. And it's not just games.
Other examples include the Netflix app that can be downloaded from the PSN Store and used to access Netflix's Watch Instantly subscription feature; MLB.TV's $100-per-season game package, which lets users watch MLB games on a TV via the PS3; the paid version of Hulu, Hulu Plus; and more.
PSN Plus customers are also losing money, since they pay for year or several month blocks of time to access exclusive content from PSN. As of now, they are also unable to play some games they've already downloaded because PSN has to be operational to play.
What happens to files stored in PSN Plus cloud backup service?
In March, Sony introduced a new feature of PSN Plus that lets gamers store 150MB of saved game data on their PSN account. In other words, users who paid for it could back up game data already saved to their console remotely to this cloud storage service as well.
But now that Sony has shut down PSN and is "rebuilding" it, will all of that data still be there when the service is restored next week?
We'll update this story when we get more information.
  • While credit card data was encrypted, personal information of customers was not. "But (it) was, of course, behind a very sophisticated security system that was breached in a malicious attack," wrote Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold.
  • Sony says it's working with law enforcement but has yet to disclose which branch or agency.
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Location: Malad East, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
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