58w ago - Recently a Northern California district court sided with Sony (PDF) on their TOS change requiring disputes to be resolved through arbitration, while LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.

To quote from TechDirt.com (linked above): "Some folks were not at all happy about this and sought to file a class action lawsuit against Sony for the change -- but that lawsuit has been (pretty quickly) rejected by the court, suggesting that the main guy suing failed to show evidence of any harm.

In an interesting move, the court found that the fact that you lost access to the network if you didn't agree to the new terms isn't evidence of any harm, but rather a choice."

Also from TheVerge.com on the LulzSec Sony Pictures Entertainment hacking last year,...

106w ago - Today Sony's Senior Director of Corporate Communications & Social Media Patrick Seybold has posted an update on their response to the U.S. House of Representatives via the PlayStation Blog.

To quote: Today, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing in Washington, DC on The Threat of Data Theft to American Consumers.

Kazuo Hirai, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sony Computer Entertainment America, submitted written answers to questions posed by the subcommittee about the large-scale, criminal cyber-attack we have experienced. We wanted to share those answers with you (click here).

In summary, we told the subcommittee that in dealing with this cyber attack we followed four key principles:

1. Act with care and caution.
2. Provide relevant information to the public when it has been verified.
3. Take responsibility for our obligations to our customers.
4. Work with law enforcement authorities.

We also informed the subcommittee of the following:

• Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal...

107w ago - Playstation Blog updated with latest info:

Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve the current outage of PlayStation Network & Qriocity services. We don't have an exact date to share at this moment as to when we will have the services turned on, but are working day and night to ensure it is as quickly as possible. We are currently working to send the following message via email to all of our registered account holders regarding a compromise of personal information as a result of this malicious attack on our servers, so please look for this information via email as well. Please note that we are as upset as you are regarding this attack and are going to proceed aggressively to track down those that are responsible.

Source, full text and letter (plus interresting comments below) here: http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2011/04/26/psnqriocity-service-update/

Letter:

Valued PlayStation Network/Qriocity Customer,

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:

1) Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network...

110w ago - Update #2: Anonymous have now issued another Press Release essentially stating that they plan to cease the attacks on Sony but intend to pursue other ways of getting Sony's attention.

Update: GameSpot.com reports that Sony has now stated the following to their PSN customers regarding the recent attacks, to quote: "If this is indeed caused by such [an] act, we want to once again thank our customers who have borne the brunt of the attack through interrupted service. Our engineers are working to restore and maintain the services, and we appreciate our customers' continued support."

As a follow-up to our previous article, today PlayStation LifeStyle (linked above) interviewed the Anonymous hacking group that has been attacking Sony who states the worst is yet to come, while KickArss.com has shared a fix for those experiencing issues with PSN.

From the PSL interview: "So far, all Sony has seen...

123w ago - Today Sony has finally spoken out against the recent PS3 Hacks stating they plan to fix the security breaches through a series of PlayStation Network updates including fraudulently unlocked PS3 Trophies.

To quote from ComputerAndVideoGames.com (linked above): "Earlier this week, hackers completely tore apart the console's few remaining lines of defence against running unauthorised code, and subsequently released the first custom PS3 firmware.

Sony has remained quiet on the issue until now, having just told our friends at Edge: "We are aware of this, and are currently looking into it. We will fix the issues through network updates, but because this is a security issue, we are not able to provide you with any more details."

Hacking groups don't believe this will be possible though, telling the BBC: The complete console is compromised...