Sony Corp. has announced that it believes the reason that hackers targeted its networks was because it was making attempts to protect its intellectual property.
The announcement was made at a shareholders’ meeting for the company by its CEO, Howard Stringer, at the same time that he dodged a request for him to step down from his leadership position in the organization.
Sony was attacked by hackers in April 2011, when 77 million user accounts were breached, allowing the attackers to gain access to the personal information within them. The accounts were both from Qriocity and the PlayStation Network; 90 percent of which were in Europe and North America. Since that time, Sony has been in a great deal of hot water over the way the situation was handled.
Lawsuits abound since the theft of the credit card information held within the accounts at Sony, leading the company to struggle with its intentions to integrate hardware and content products by way of online services.
Since the initial attack announcement, it has also revealed that additional hacking attempts were made in both May and June.
So far, the responsible parties have yet to come forward, but Sony has been making a concerted effort to determine why it was targeted for its customer information and the modification of its systems.
In his speech, Stringer explained that “We believe that we first became the subject of attack because we tried to protect our IP (intellectual property), our content, in this case videogames.”
Sony is far from alone as a victim of cyber-attacks. Google Inc. and Lockheed Martin were also on the receiving end of hacker mischief within the last month.
