Sunday, May 29, 2011

Sony May Know How Hacker Penetrated Online Networks


Sony believes it knows how a hacker penetrated its online entertainment networks in an incident that exposed 100 million customer accounts, the company said in a letter to U.S. lawmakers released today. 


Sony declined to publicly disclose how the hacker gained access, saying the information might jeopardize an ongoing probe of the attacks and put other networks at risk, according to the May 26 letter to Representatives Mary Bono Mack, a California Republican, and G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat.

Sony still doesn’t know who was responsible for the intrusion or precisely how much information was taken, the company said in the letter responding to questions from Bono Mack and Butterfield. The hacker took steps to cover tracks in and out of the company’s servers and conceal what data was taken, Sony said.

“These gaps in what we know are not for lack of trying by experts, but rather an unfortunate testament to the skill of those who perpetrated the attacks,” Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s executive deputy president in charge of consumer products, wrote. “Some aspects of the intrusion may never be known.”

The incident at Tokyo-based Sony, which led the company to temporarily shut down its PlayStation gaming network, has sharpened U.S. government scrutiny of how companies protect consumer data and notify the public about cyber attacks.

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