Slashdot Mirror
Sony's Plan To Tighten Security and Fight Hacktivism
mask.of.sanity writes "Sony Entertainment Network is rebuilding its information security posture to defend against hacktivism. It includes a security operations center that serves as a nerve center collating information on everything from staff phone calls, to CCTV, to PlayStation gamers. If it is successful, the counter intelligence-based system will be deployed across the entire company. 'At Sony, we are modifying our programs to deal less with state-sponsored [attacks] and more with socially-motivated hackers. It will be different,' said Chief Security Officer Brett Wahlin."
good for them
pity I wont buy another sony product ever again.
Don't be dicks.
As part of the society, you should think about how not to become a target of hacking activism. Especially when it's impossible to crush every one of the "hackers".
Better yet, convert them into your loyal customers, and even better, direct their anger to your competitors.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Here's a start:
1. Bring back OtherOS
2. Stop supporting CSS, AACS, HDCP and other forms of DRM
3. Apologise for installing rookits on people's computers without their knowledge
4. Apologise for taking legal action against people who circumvented their digital restrictions
NATO just dropped a few billion for one! Now SONY will have one! Where's yours!?!?!
I smell Y2k sized contract money now!
I am now a Anti-Cyber-Threat-Security-Response-Operations-Analysis-Coordination-Center Specialist!
In the train:
Passenger: "What line of work are you in?"
Me: "Cyber Security!"
Passenger: "Do I need that?"
Me: "Does your wife know about the email to your girlfriend on your laptop that I am reading right now?"
Passenger: "Ok, I'll buy some."
Passenger: "But do I need to wear that tinfoil hat . . . ?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
There's sonmething new from Sony you absolutely MUST have.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Evidently Sony learned nothing from the cause/effect relationship of their brutal approach to both security and their users. Sony set the stage by deploying rootkits and other security attacks on their own customers. Then they retroactively deleted the Linux (OtherOS) option from PS3s, many of which they'd sold to hackers for the very purpose of "hacking Sony". Though OtherOS had been crippled from the beginning, there was little effort by PS3 hackers to crack the lockout from the hardware, until Sony tried shutting all OtherOS users down. Then hacking the PS3 became necessary for every PS3 Linux user.
It was a case of "when guns (OtherOSes) are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns (OtherOSes)". Why stop at just keeping what you paid for, when you had actually paid for more than you'd originally gotten? Sony had destroyed any ethical relationship, and the community was organized.
Now, I'm not pinning all or even most of the attacks on Sony beyond keeping Linux on the small PS3 Linux community - maybe not even any of them. But that episode showed the world Sony was a legitimate target. Then after some success in keeping what they paid for resulted in arresting the hacker, Sony was now a legit target for both legitimate hacking and just plain "bash the bad guy". Combine that with Sony's copyright overreaches, its region-encoding scams, its DVD backup denials (also broken and showing Sony both greedy and vulnerable) - Sony fanned the flames of backlash.
Now Sony is just escalating the conflict. It would be a lot cheaper to give hackers back Linux, this time with some support, to give them more of a common interest with Sony. Instead Sony is further defining itself as an enemy instead of a partner. Sony's awareness of social networks seems to be purely as either enemy or marketing victim. This will not end well. In fact it will not end, and many will suffer.
--
make install -not war