Government report finds Sony downplayed size of compromised data in April press release and May news conference.
Gamers all over the world have no doubt been keeping track of the recent breach of information the PlayStation Network experienced earlier this year. Back in April, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. officially announced that some personal information had been compromised. Kyodo News, however, has revealed that documents sourced by Japan’s official Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has found documentation showing Sony was aware of the scope of the data breach earlier than it had originally acknowledged.
According to the document, Sony confirmed on April 25 (U.S time) that a “fairly large amount of data” was compromised in an illegal intrusion into its systems. The company was unable to determine specifically what kind of personal user information was leaked. SCE president Kazuo Hirai said in a news conference in May 1 that the company learned of the possibility of the breach on April 26, contradicting what Sony said in the aforementioned document.
Additional notes on the document stated that on April 25, Sony was concerned that disclosing information while assessing the breach would unnecessarily create confusion among users. A Sony spokesperson said that “[they] hadn’t figured out [at the time] what kind of data had been leaked. If only passwords and IDs [were breached], they cannot be considered personal information, and so we didn’t want to bewilder our customers.”
Recently, Sony confirmed that the last remaining PlayStation Network services were restored. Some of the hackers allegedly responsible for the outage were also apprehended.
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