How Sony PlayStation Network Was Targeted - Essay Example

The company’s data center located in San Diego, Qriocity music service, and also the Sony Online Entertainment networks were accessed. On April 20, Sony did off the affected systems and left to restore the PSN services for the users in the U.S until 14th May. Users were asked to change their usernames and passwords till mid of May. Sony had to do the page down as temporarily because attackers exploited the URL of Sony’s website (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2011).

A series of attacks on Sony’s online entertainment services on the PSN and Online Entertainment services were carried out by the attackers in the same period. Other victims of attackers concerning Sony were “Sony BMG Greece”, “Sony BMG Japan”, “So-Net ISP in Japan, and servers of Sony in Thailand. The attackers also hit the official version of the Sony Ericson Eshop in Canada (McMillan, 2011).

“What was stolen in the Sony PlayStation Network security breach”
Personal information of more than 77 million Qriocity and PSN users and more than 24.5 million Online entertainment users was stolen. The attackers rummaged through a wealth of information concerning the users, and their attributes such as names of users, their addresses, email addresses, and birth dates. Attackers also approached the login information of users such as usernames, and passwords. Kazuo Hirai, who was head of the board of Company “Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC”, told the U.S. lawmakers in a May 3 letter (Colvile, 2011).

Attackers worked so sophistically that Sony hired forensic consultants to check, and confirm the extent of the stolen data. It took more than a month to discover whether credit card information was stolen or customers’ data. It was told that only credit card information was stolen as attackers encrypted the credit card information (Carstensen, 2011).
“How was the Sony PlayStation Network security breach accomplished”

It was noticed on April 19, that Sony’s PSN servers were rebooting, and no process was rescheduled on these days. The next day, it was identified that someone had intruded the Sony’s servers and accessed the data. It turned out that criminals had gained illegal and unauthorized access to Sony’s servers as servers were hit by the attack of denial-of-service (DoS) (Brice, 2011).

By exploiting the software flaws, and using aggressive techniques, the hackers accessed the network and increased their privileges. They used highly sophisticated techniques to hide from the system administrators and deleted the log files. Sony’s team did not identify the intrusion, as they were busy in identifying the DoS attacks (Carlson, 2011).

Hirai in his letter written on May 3 told the U.S. lawmakers that experienced cyberattackers had hit the PSN servers and committed the security breach. Hirai in his letter also explained that the Servers of Sony were the victims of very professional, criminal, and sophisticated cyber attackers. They had stolen the credit card and personal information planning for their illegal purposes. The Head of the Sony Company also blamed the hacker activist group of hackers named as Anonymous for these data breaching activities. On the other hand, the group denied this allegation made by Sony Company. Anonymous took revenge for the allegations made by the Sony company as they were blamed for hacking the Company’s website a few weeks earlier (Carstensen, 2011).

“What was the cost of the breach to Sony”
The company paid a substantive cost as threats were detected after shutting down the systems as told by the Hirai. During the days of system problems, customers were offered the services without any cost, with a free month package. Personal security and identification services to U.S. customers were provided. The company had to pay more than $171 million for customer support, upgrade of network, and legal fees by the end of May as told by the Company’s sources (McMillan, 2011).

“What is the breach's potential effect on regulations”
Sony was criticized by the public and closed the issue of the PSN breach. Sony Company did not inform the customers about the breaching of their personal information by someone attackers until 26th April. A week had passed after the incident occurred as an unauthorized person accessing the information over PSN (Carstensen, 2011).

U.S nationals have become angry about this breach of personal information from attackers. Many people have asked for stricter data protection, and breach notification acts. Company officials were called to Capitol Hill to testify on the issue of access of unauthorized persons before the Manufacturing and Trade subcommittee, and the House Commerce on May 4, but they declined the invitation. Mary Bono Mack the Chairman of the Subcommittee expressed their exacting dismay and Sony had chosen to disclose the breach post on their PlayStation blog and called the actions of Sony an effort without enthusiasm and effort. Sony also emphasized that lawmakers enact more strict guidelines for the protection of personal information (Carlson, 2011).

Officials other than U.S lawmakers are also concerned with the issue of data breaching. States regulators in U.S and privacy officials in foreign countries have also been against Sony’s network security and demanded an explanation from the Company management. Attorney General George Jepsen refrained and said that Network’s users were not intimated promptly (Carlson, 2011). Read More