Posts Tagged ‘Stringer’
Sony found 25 million more accounts were hacked
Dweeb-in-Chief
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Sony said Monday that hackers may have taken personal information from an additional 24.6 million user accounts after a review of the recent PlayStation Network breach found an intrusion at a division that makes multiplayer online games.
The data breach comes on top of the 77 million PlayStation accounts it has already said were jeopardized by a malicious intrusion. The latest incident occurred April 16 and 17 — earlier than the PlayStation break-in, which occurred from April 17 to 19, Sony said.
About 23,400 financial records from an outdated 2007 database involving people outside the U.S. may have been stolen in the newly discovered breach, including 10,700 direct debit records of customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, it said.
The outdated information contained credit card numbers, debit card numbers and expiration dates, but not the 3-digit security code on the back of credit cards. The direct debit records included bank account numbers, customer names, account names and customer addresses.
Company spokeswoman Taina Rodriguez said Sony had no evidence the information taken from Sony Online Entertainment, or SOE, was used illicitly for financial gain.
Sony has no evidence they know how to tie their own shoes.
Bad enough they stopped R&D and got rid of much of their design talent. I think they stopped reading newspapers and geek journals, never did learn what could be hacked online.
“We should have been safe with Sony!”
Sony lost $450 million last year – paid Stringer $4.5 million + stock options
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Sony PlayStation gamers expressed shock and disappointment on Wednesday at a massive data hack in which their names, addresses and credit-card details might have been stolen from the PlayStation Network.
Shoppers at London video-games stores said they might leave the network, PSN, which allows them to play games with 77 million other members and buy games online, while some gamers writing in online forums called for a boycott of Sony products…
Sony warned earlier that unidentified hackers had stolen the personal details of its 77 million user accounts, in one of the biggest-ever Internet security break-ins.
The Japanese electronics giant advised users, almost 90 percent of whom are based in Europe and the United States, to change any common passwords they also used for other services.
It said children with accounts established by their parents might have had their data exposed.
“If you think the gamers are pissed over at playstation blog, wait until the Mums get wind of this,” wrote senior member barrybarryk on the PS3news.com online forum…
Sony pulled the plug on the network eight days ago but did not tell the public about the stolen data until Tuesday.
Phew! I don’t know of any industry guaranteed safe from attack. I have some experience with procedures that appear to work – when enforced with diligence and consistency. I’m not certain about any IT departments other than those I personally could vouch for, though.
The single biggest mistake is trusting your employees to follow procedures, to never indulge in personal vendettas [har!] and, then, always remember to cut off individual access to computers and the network before anyone is told they’re departing.
Oh yeah – just discussing this with another geek in the family – remember all the crap that’s happened at Sony from the closing of research centers to failed security to snooping on users has happened on Stringer’s watch.
Sony ready to unveil “restructuring”
Tensions are rising within Sony over a restructuring aimed at cutting billions of yen from costs, with Sir Howard Stringer, its British-born chairman and chief executive, pitted against what one senior figure called an “old guard” of managers in its electronics division.
News of the clash comes as the Japanese consumer electronics group prepares to announce today or tomorrow the details of a restructuring that was announced in December, including where job cuts will fall.
Managers in the company have told the Financial Times that Sir Howard’s plans to cut 16,000 full-time and part-time jobs and restructure the company have met resistance from executives in its manufacturing business.
The dispute centres on whether products such as televisions have become commodities, in which case, Sir Howard believes, Sony should cut production costs and rely more on sales of software built into its gadgets…
The long delay since the restructuring was outlined on December 9 has added to anxiety among workers. One Sony employee said that the mood within the company was “black”, while on internet message boards factory workers have described management as “nothing but cost-cutters”.
“We used to get the message: ‘Make a high-quality product‘. Now we don’t know what we should be doing, except maybe not spending any money,” said one engineer who has left the company.
My geek purchases that used to result in Sony over anyone else have always been founded on value for dollar spent. Recent years that means Samsung. But, it also means Apple. To me.
Stringer sounds like the archtypical beancounter. The sort who could make Tottenham Hotspur lose money.
UPDATE: Sony closing their TV plants in Japan, laying off 2000 workers.
