Congress Has Questions for Sony About Attack

 

 

A House of Representatives subcommittee sent a letter to Sony on Friday asking for information about the attack on the Sony Playstation Network by hackers last week. The gaming network has 77 million registered users.

The letter, which was addressed to Mr. Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony, asked the company to answer a detailed list of questions related to the intrusion. It wants a reply by May 6.

In the letter, which was written by the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, the group’s chairman, Representative Mary Bono Mack, Republican of California, asked a number of security and privacy related questions that Sony has never disclosed to the public. They included when the intrusion occurred, if Sony knew who was responsible for the attack and when the company notified law enforcement.

The letter also asked Sony to explain what it knew about the type of data that was stolen by the hackers and if it included any credit card information.

Although Sony says it doesn’t have evidence that customers’ credit card numbers were stolen, on Thursday it was reported that hackers on underground Web forums had claimed to have access to a database that included PlayStation customer names, addresses, usernames, passwords and as many as 2.2 million credit card numbers.

The PlayStation Network has been down for nearly two weeks and it is unclear when the service will be fully back online.

The letter sent to Sony. The full document can be seen here.

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