PSN Error: Sony’s Outdated Software, Anonymous Responds» MTV Multiplayer

I'm ready for this Sony situation to be over. It's been 16 days since the PlayStation Network went down. As recent as the end oflast week, Sony was telling us that they planned to have the service back up on Tuesday. Well, it's Thursday, and last I checked all of your Sackboys and Helghasts are still offline. I suppose there's no point in rushing it, though. According to Eugene Spafford, an information security professor at Purdue, Sony's unwillingness to slow down may have contributed to this entire mess.

During Spafford'stestimonyyesterday to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on
Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, he implied that Sony had been using outdated software on its servers. Worse, he also states that he believes the company had been warned.

"Presumably, {Sony is} large enough that they could have afforded to spend an appropriate amount on security and privacy protections of their data; I have no information about what protections they had in place, although some news reports indicate that Sony was running software that was badly out of date, and had been warned,"Spafford testified.

This all leads back to the assumption that Sony was unprepared, both in the effectiveness of their security system and their ability to respond to such a breach. While this sounds fairly damning, and many news outlets have covered Spafford's statements today, it's important to note that he is merely citing other sources, not his own personal dealings with the Sony servers.

For what it's worth, the Purdue professor also testified that the"majority of victims were likely young people whose sense of risk, privacy and consequence are not yet fully developed, and thus they may also not fully understand the full ramifications..."This is important, because even though the average age of a gamer is now around 34, your meager brains are still developing. Ouch.

Also, as wereportedyesterday, Sony has attempted to blame activist hacking group Anonymous for the data breach. Sony Computer Entertainment boss Kaz Hirai had penned a letter to the Congressional committee, claiming that the company had discovered a file on a Sony Online Entertainment server with the title"Anonymous."The file supposedly included the web organization's slogan,"We Are Legion."

Anonymous fired back today, viapress release, outright denying the accusation. The group stated that they have never been known to have involvement with credit card data theft and are completely transparent in regards to their operations.

"If a legitimate and honest investigation into the credit card {theft} is conducted, Anonymous will not be found liable,"Anonymous wrote,"While we are a distributed and decentralized group, our 'leadership' does not condone credit card theft."

The saga continues.

Source