Sony PlayStation Network security breach Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Sony PlayStation Network security breach - Essay Example On April 20, the Sony did off the affected systems and left to restore the PSN services for the users in U.S until 14th May. Users were asked to change their usernames and passwords till mid of the 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 the Sony’s online entertainment services on the PSN and Online Entertainment services were carried by the attackers in the same period. Other victims of attackers concerning the Sony were as the â€Å"Sony BMG Greece†, â€Å"Sony BMG Japan†, â€Å"So-Net ISP in Japan, and servers of Sony in Thailand. The attackers also hit official version of the Sony Ericson Eshop in Canada (McMillan, 2011). Personal information of more than 77 million Qriocity and PSN users more than 24.5 million Online entertainment users 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 â€Å"Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC†, told the U.S. lawmakers in a May 3 letter (Colvile, 2011). Attackers worked so sophistically that Sony hired the 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). 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 severs and accessed the data. It turned out that