Dear Friends,

I know this has been a frustrating time for all of you.

Let me assure you that the resources of this company have been focused on investigating the entire nature and impact of the cyber-attack we’ve all experienced and on fixing it. We are absolutely dedicated to restoring full and safe service as soon as possible and rewarding you for your patience. We will settle for nothing less.

To date, there is no confirmed evidence any credit card or personal information has been misused, and we continue to monitor the situation closely. We are also moving ahead with plans to help protect our customers from identity theft around the world. A program for U.S. PlayStation Network and Qriocity customers that includes a $1 million identity theft insurance policy per user was launched earlier today and announcements for other regions will be coming soon.

As we have announced, we will be offering a “Welcome Back” package to our customers once our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are up and running. This will include, among other benefits, a month of free PlayStation Plus membership for all PSN customers, as well as an extension of subscriptions for PlayStation Plus and Music Unlimited customers to make up for time lost.

As a company we — and I — apologize for the inconvenience and concern caused by this attack. Under the leadership of Kazuo Hirai, we have teams working around the clock and around the world to restore your access to those services as quickly, and as safely, as possible.

I know some believe we should have notified our customers earlier than we did. It’s a fair question. As soon as we discovered the potential scope of the intrusion, we shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services and hired some of the best technical experts in the field to determine what happened. I wish we could have gotten the answers we needed sooner, but forensic anolysis is a complex, time-consuming process. Hackers, after all, do their best to cover their tracks, and it took some time for our experts to find those tracks and begin to identify what personal information had — or had not — been taken.

As a result of what we discovered we notified you of the breach. Our investigation is ongoing, and we are upgrading our security so that if attacks like this happen again, our defenses will be even stronger.

In the last few months, Sony has faced a terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan. But now we are facing a very man-made event – a criminal attack on us — and on you — and we are working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the world to apprehend those responsible.

In the coming days, we will restore service to the networks and welcome you back to the fun. I wanted to personally reach out and let you know that we are committed to serving you to the very best of our ability, protecting your information better than ever, and getting you back to what you signed up for – all the games and great entertainment experiences that you expect from Sony.

With best regards,
http://www.sony.com/SCA/bios/stringer.shtml

:ahhh: :swear: :banghead: :sadvaultboy:

I'm getting impatient. very much so.

Typed up by some entry level employee I'm sure. Still, it's a pretty decent apology; if they stick with it they might get some positive publicity.

Me too bro but this did take the sting out of it a little.

It's not even good compensation to begin with.

It's not even good compensation to begin with.

I'd say, if anything it entices people to go buy a subscription to + so they can keep all their free stuff and continue to get random discounts on things you may not actually need.

Are you gonna say something useful or just complain some more? Seriously your 0/2 for worthwhile postings in this thread. Knock it off.

How about apologizing for the worst security practices imaginable?

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/psn-was-running-on-unpatched-apache-server-with-no-firewall-2011055/

http://www.techspot.com/news/43540-sony-some-psn-user-data-was-unencrypted.html

WOuld ya feel better if they gave us nothing? Seriously a lot of serious Sony hate. What do you want them to do?

WOuld ya feel better if they gave us nothing? Seriously a lot of serious Sony hate. What do you want them to do?

WOuld ya feel better if they gave us nothing? Seriously a lot of serious Sony hate. What do you want them to do?

I would like something along this:

"We were negligent in our security and maintenance, and as such your personal information was compromised. http://kotaku.com/#!5798510/the-playstation-network-hack-timeline, and we are sorry for having our heads up our... well, you know."

All that they knew was that they were breached, even up till now there are no confirmed misuses of credit information, and they have the FBI in on it. The sources that said there were confirmed breaches, were not credible. The way I see it, I think someone did hack the PSN, but I dont think that they obtained useful information. I believe that they rebuilt the PSN to make damn sure, and I also believe that the mandatory password change is an additional per-caution. PSN has been down for 3weeks, in those same 3 weeks not a single confirmed report of credit fraud, with 7million users?

For all I know they didnt have inferior software when it came to protecting user information. I do think that they saw it as a near miss, so they decide to rebuild it bigger and better.

The only place that Sony has went wrong was not being more communicative with us, but I think they wanted to know exactly what happened before they said anything. So I dont think they handed PR the best way, but they arent perfect and neither am I.

All that they knew was that they were breached, even up till now there are no confirmed misuses of credit information, and they have the FBI in on it. The sources that said there were confirmed breaches, were not credible. The way I see it, I think someone did hack the PSN, but I dont think that they obtained useful information. I believe that Sony rebuilt the PSN to make damn sure, and I also believe that the mandatory password change is an additional per-caution. PSN has been down for 3weeks, in those same 3 weeks not a single confirmed report of credit fraud, with 7million users?

For all I know they didnt have inferior software when it came to protecting user information. I do think that they saw it as a near miss, so they decide to rebuild it bigger and better.

That could be what its all about.

The only place that Sony has went wrong was not being more communicative with us, but I think they wanted to know exactly what happened before they said anything. So I dont think they handed PR the best way, but they arent perfect and neither am I.


As far as compensation is concerned, had they give us nothing, people would say that they shouldve. Now that they are giving us something people are saying its a marketing ploy.

So if your Sony do you:

A: Give no compensation and piss people off.

B:Give compensation and be accused of marketing ploy

or

???

The temporary (as in I don't get to keep the stuff I download) compensation (PS +) is difficult to be excited for, however. Couldn't they have just place $20 in everyone's account funds, instead. I would have liked that very much. Even $10 would let me get what I want.

Anyway, I don't hate Sony, however. If they can fix what the problem was, it's good enough, for me. I've been very satisfied with Sony products throughout my life and I still am.



...I just want a free Final Fantasy game.

My understanding of the compensation was that they were giving free downloads and you get to keep the free downloads. Then the PS+ Service was temporary. I think you do get to keep the downloads (can anyone confirm?).

I'm pretty sure it's already been said, in the other PSN thread, that PS+ free dls are only good up until PS+ expires. Then you have to start paying.

To be totally honest I dont really understand this stuff all that well. What I do understand is that Sony was attacked. Sony was victimized right along with us as users. I do know that there were postings all over the place that were simply not true, but were stated as fact. The cloudy part to me is "What did Sony know, and at what time did they know it?"
The way I understand it was that they new they had been breached and they didnt say anything because they didnt know how deep the breach was. Then they found out that data had been removed, and they told everybody, and took it down and it will come back up with additional safe gaurds. The timeline is murky and that IS Sony's fault.