Sony responds to Congress with open letter, suggests 'Anonymous' was responsible

by JC Fletcher on May 4th 2011 12:21PM

In response to a letter sent to Sony by the US House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, Sony's Kazuo Hirai sent an open letter detailing Sony's "principles" in dealing with the PSN outage and Sony/SOE data leaks. The full letter has been scanned and placed on Flickr for public view.

A PlayStation Blog post summarizes the content of the letter. According to Hirai, Sony has worked under the following four principles in dealing with the issue: "Act with care and caution, " "Provide relevant information to the public when it has been verified," "Take responsibility for our obligations to our customers," and "Work with law enforcement authorities."

In addition, the letter and post provide a timeline of the attack, including this early clue: "We discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named 'Anonymous' with the words 'We are Legion.'" Despite that evidence, Sony still says it has yet to identify the "individual(s) responsible for the breach." It's unclear if that means Sony does not think the hacking organization known as Anonymous was responsible or, rather, if it hasn't managed to uncover the actual identities of Anonymous' ... err, anonymous contributors.

The "Welcome Back" program was also detailed, through which Sony is offering free downloads, and free PlayStation Plus memberships (and Qriocity access for those subscribers) lasting 30 days plus the length of the PSN outage.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Tags: congress, house-of-representatives, kaz-hirai, kazuo-hirai, outage, playstation, ps3, psn, psn-outage-2011, psp, sony, sony-online-entertainment

Reader Comments (191)

This is what you get when they hire lawyers instead of security experts, heck i bet sonys game designers are also lawyers too.

@Insane Koala

I disagree. They should be hiring lawyers and more security people. Security is important but so is justice.

@Insane Koala

"i bet sonys game designers are also lawyers too."

I guess that explains why most PS3 games are boring as hell. PS1 and PS2 games were good but the ps3 games are garbage.

@Geohotz fanboi

Troll Harder FAIL TROLL

@Insane Koala

Hmmm... I wonder what we did to deserve our info being stolen...

Damn right. Nothing.

@Geohotz fanboi
Your name is really appropriate.

@Geohotz fanboi
Uh, you know Sony made games for the PSX & PS2 as well, right?

But yeah, Uncharted 2, Infamous and God of War have lawyer written all over them.

@Wiizer
Actually, you trusted someone else with your data. That's what you did. It's like if you let your neighbor borrow your car, and he gets in a car accident. Is it all his fault? Is it the other guy in the accident's fault? Or is it your fault for lending your car? It's kind of a murky situation, and IMO everyone shares some of the blame... That said, the main preventative would be: you are the first safeguard of your own information.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have given Sony your info, but as more info goes online and as it becomes more valuable, this problem is going to become larger in the days ahead. This is a genuine "ecommerce" problem.

@Insane Koala

Yes, that's what Sony did. They had their entire HR department run a costing excercise to establish whether it was cheaper to hire lawyers or security analysts, no other companies have ever been hacked and Sony employees regularly go out and kill bunnies during their lunch break.

@Insane Koala
You'd think with THOR coming out this week, the ban hammer would be swinging like mad.

@Insane Koala
I wasn't aware game designes were in charge of network security.

Or that the network security folks ever anticipated someone giving out the consoles encryption keys. Until that happened things were pretty secure for Sony.

@Geohotz fanboi

Classic Joystiq? The site is hardly even six years old yet. How the hell can there be a classic version of it? Not to mention none of those people were here when it launched.

@Geohotz fanboi

No, Your comment was just stupid. Not funny. Youre just annoyed that you arent funny. Youre not funny.

@LEONLEONLEON

You're*

@Geohotz fanboi
Correcting, people's spelling? NOW THAT'S FUNNY! XD

...

@Geohotz fanboi

I was all set to write a comeback to your statements, then I read your username name, then I figured you'd be to stupid to understand logic.

@sigma8
What a great comparison!
I guess if my local bank was to be robbed and I lost my savings it would be my fault for thinking my money was safe there!

@sigma8 I love how reasonable, intelligent comments like this one get downvoted so badly.

@jph89
says the guy who can't spot a troll :D

@TheFirstLegionnaire

The exaggerated defense of PSN on the internets since this fiasco has started can only mean a couple of things.

1. Sony has paid message board users overtime to help deflect from this mess.

2. PSN is more popular than Xbox Live in the states, and we are now just realizing it.

If its point # 2 then i can say that Microsoft has its hands full and they are not admitting they to losing many subscribers over the past couple years. They also haven't done a good job of defending themselves on how Sony has taken all their ideas this generation when it comes to online gaming.

@Insane Koala
I'm not trying to step up, but, how valuable was the info stolen, without naming the credit cards(since I haven't read anything about them being charged or anything).
Your address? telephone? name?
C'mon those things are easy to find in a telephone directory.

@TheFirstLegionnaire
Wow, what a sad thing indeed it is to try and write something that is against the media negativity barrage that's befallen Sony since this fiasco has started. It could be that we're all daft barstards that can't remember just how MANY accounts had been compromised, or we've yet to be brainwashed into believing every bit of fear mongering out there. Hmmm...really...

@mrantimatter

"I wasn't aware game designes were in charge of network security.

Or that the network security folks ever anticipated someone giving out the consoles encryption keys. Until that happened things were pretty secure for Sony."

That's not how security works. Nothing that is done on a PS3 should be able to compromise personal information stored on the network. The security that measures that keep this information safe resides on the network, not on a home console.

@(Unverified) Well since you seem to love it so...

EAT THE DOWNVOTE. EAT IT IN YOUR FACE.

erhmmph....yes.

@sigma8 is the truth too hard for people to handle? they downvoted you and you were completely right. it's the chance people take in this data age, and what happened with SONY could happen to anyone's system at any time. The ONLY 100% failsafe is not supplying anyone your data.

that said, i think i'll be one of the first to give sony back my payment info. and if something bad happens again? so be it. it's the risk taken with ANY online transaction, no matter how secure.

@TheFirstLegionnaire
Wow, you tried to make a point then came up with "PS3 haz no gamez" and lost ALL credibility is zero seconds flat.

go count game exclusives this year for each system. When you get to "2" for xbox, let me know which has more games.

@eNriqeu

Try adding your D.O.B to that list, and you have means to use it for identity theft. Moron.

Common sense lost on you it appears.

Could this be the smoking gun for Anon, or were they set up? Inquiring minds want to know.

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga
If it was Anonymous, they'd have done something like that. If it wasn't Anonymous, then whoever did it would likely do something like that too, to misdirect investigations.

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga
Thus, IMO, the existence of that file/message says nothing.

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga

Anonymous is a convenient scapegoat for any hacking, but this probably wasn't Anonymous. Hacking Sony would have nothing to with social justice, and Anonymous hasn't taken credit for it, which they always do.

Blaming Anonymous for this hack is like blaming the NSA for a power out when you didn't pay the bills. Sure, some people might believe it, but in the end this is just the people who were too lax in how they maintained their systems trying to shift the blame to an organization that can't really respond.

@making11s

" "We discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named 'Anonymous' with the words 'We are Legion.' "

Unless you have proof as to who else did it, The evidence looks pretty clear.

@AltairArcanum So if I robbed a bank and left a note saying, "I am Altair Arcanum, I totally robbed this bank", that would be pretty clear evidence? If I give myself a nametag that says "Elvis", is that evidence of me actually being the King?

Anon has publicly gone after banks and governments before; what makes you think they would be scared to cop to going after Sony? Plus, Anon is a large organization: if they did something this illegal and immoral, there'd be members ratting out the operation's ringleaders left and right (note: stealing the personal information of innocent consumers is more immoral than DDOSing servers, at least in my book). Not saying that they absolutely didn't do it, just saying that it makes little-to-no logical sense to come to the conclusion that they did it.

@Mutagenaric Oh, and I'm talking about Anonymous as an ORGANIZATION, not Anonymous as in "Some person who might belong to Anonymous incidentally". Because there's actually a difference, people - just like how being at war with fundamentalist extremists isn't the same thing as being at war with Islam.

@making11s
Ah yes "social justice" that's why they tried uploading porn to youtube labelled as kid shows...

Anonymous is a loosely affiliated group with almost nothing in common. They work together to achieve common goals, they do not share a moral code that would prevent them from doing something like this, hence why they are being blamed.

@making11s In Sony's press conference they said they saw no link to the 4Chan group. So it sounds as if they are unconvinced also.

Yet you don't mind accusing them of making accusations. Apparently you are guilty of some of the same things you accuse Sony of.

@Mutagenaric
Although I completely understand how that file might be decoy, their videos are so asinine that I can't trust a word they say. The file is either a decoy or a bold move.
The only real way to solve the case is to objectively trace the intrusion to its origin.

Thanks anonymous!

children...

@eat it

I love GeoHotz.

@Geohotz fanboi
Calm your GeoBoner bro....cold ice.

@Geohotz fanboi Every once in a while a turd floats to the top for everyone to hate and get angry at.

#ThanksForBeingIt

Welcome back program sucks

@(Unverified) O it is out, I did not know that, what content did you get for free how much was it worth, o you don't know because it isn't out yet? then stop wasting space on Joystiq servers you know they have to pay for them?

>___> ugh, when the hell is psn coming back on.

@Roxas560

After the hackers are done buying things with our credit cards.

@Roxas560
Pretty soon I'm sure. LOL

@Geohotz fanboi
when you leave

So did Anonymous do it or didn't do it

You know at first I thought "maybe it wasn't anon."
But after reading that it's pretty obvious.

God damnit, assholes. I like the principle of homebrew and unlocked hardware too but I'm not going to steal software, or attack online servers that allow millions of people to connect and play games for fun, competition or otherwise.

Maybe I'm just not an idiot.

@BearInTheAir75
How is it obvious? If you were a professional corporate hacker, interested in obscuring your own activities, can you think of many reasons why you wouldn't seize an easy opportunity to cause all fingers to point somewhere other than you? It might have been Anonymous, but they're not usually shy about claiming crap. Also, corporations aren't known for being bastions of trustworthiness when their financials are on the line...and even among that esteemed group, I trust Sony less than many others.

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Sony responds to Congress with open letter, suggests 'Anonymous' was responsible

Reader Comments (191)

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:23PM Insane Koala said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:28PM eat it said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:31PM Geohotz fanboi said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:34PM HardBoiled2009 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:35PM Wiizer said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:35PM PointlessPuppies said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:42PM Deaths Hand said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:47PM sigma8 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:52PM Rylan said

Posted: May 4th 2011 1:19PM foxhound said

Posted: May 4th 2011 1:20PM mrantimatter said

Posted: May 4th 2011 1:32PM Punkrawk Bbob said

Posted: May 4th 2011 1:38PM LEONLEONLEON said

Posted: May 4th 2011 1:43PM Geohotz fanboi said

Posted: May 4th 2011 1:50PM PointlessPuppies said

Posted: May 4th 2011 1:52PM jph89 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 2:05PM DreadArrow said

Posted: May 4th 2011 2:35PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 4th 2011 2:36PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 4th 2011 2:42PM leobebes said

Posted: May 4th 2011 3:02PM eNriqeu said

Posted: May 4th 2011 3:35PM SlaveZero said

Posted: May 4th 2011 3:39PM chispito said

Posted: May 4th 2011 5:09PM Vagrant Zero said

Posted: May 4th 2011 9:27PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 5th 2011 1:49AM Cavall said

Posted: May 5th 2011 3:00PM DigitalEmporer said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:25PM The angry pro consumer gaming ga said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:38PM sigma8 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:38PM sigma8 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:49PM making11s said

Posted: May 4th 2011 1:48PM AltairArcanum said

Posted: May 4th 2011 2:03PM Mutagenaric said

Posted: May 4th 2011 2:11PM Mutagenaric said

Posted: May 4th 2011 2:12PM DreadArrow said

Posted: May 4th 2011 2:23PM spin cycle said

Posted: May 4th 2011 3:52PM Manifest37 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:25PM eat it said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:34PM Geohotz fanboi said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:43PM Deaths Hand said

Posted: May 4th 2011 2:36PM sammo21 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:25PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 4th 2011 6:09PM tjaldid said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:25PM Roxas560 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:55PM Geohotz fanboi said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:58PM Sprinkled Cupcake said

Posted: May 4th 2011 4:42PM gonzalezo21 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:25PM chrono said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:26PM BearInTheAir75 said

Posted: May 4th 2011 12:41PM sigma8 said

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