Sony sued for negligence over PS3 hack

It's been two months since the personal details of 100 million PSN and SOE users were stolen and Sony is still dealing with the fall-out.

Sony has faced a lot of criticism over the monumental PSN hack that saw the data of millions of users compromised. Though the hack happened two month ago (and many more companies and agencies have been hacked since then), time has done little to calm those who feel Sony didn't do enough to protect user data. In fact, three PlayStation users in New York have filed suit against the the electronics giant claiming negligence.

The plaintiffs, named as Felix Cortorreal, Jimmy Cortorreal and Jacques Daoud, are accusing Sony of negligence, privacy violations, and breach of contract, and say the company failed to protect users despite warnings from staff. According to HotHardware, the case alleges that Sony ignored warnings from its own staff, made no attempt to address the smaller break-ins now seen as precursors to the huge breach, laid off security personnel right before the breach occurred, and failed to properly safeguard consumers' information.

Though it remains to be seen whether Sony did ignore warnings from staff, the lawsuit claim that Sony failed to adequately protect customers' information may have a grain of truth to it. Following the breach, the company openly admitted that the attack exploited a “known vulnerability” in the web application server platform used in PSN. Sony CIO Shinji Hasejima said in early May that though the flaw was generally known, Sony management was not aware of it. The company also revealed that the attack went undetected for a period of time because its security team was tied up dealing with DDoS attacks that happened around the same time.

In related news, Sony chief Howard Stringer has once again apologized for the breach and credited users for their loyalty to the PlayStation brand. Speaking during a shareholders meeting, Stringer told attendees, “Our brand perception, you'll be happy to know, is clearly improving again.” It has also emerged that Stringer will be taking a 16 percent pay-cut this year. TGDaily reports that his compensation for the fiscal year just ended was 345 million yen, or about $4.3 million, and 500,000 shares of Sony stock, which are worth 518 million yen at the moment.
source: 2DayBlog.com