Sony hacked again: Embarassed company was ‘asking for it’

Just days after Sony restored its PlayStation Network and working to restore trust back to its customers, a new cyber attack hit the company again, this time it targeted Sony Pictures. The hackers reportedly stole 1 million users’ personal information from the Sony Pictures database.

In a report from Gizmodo, alleged hacker group LulzSec has claimed responsibility for the infiltration into Sony Pictures Entertainment’s websites and posted a statement.

From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING, said LulzSec. Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?”

What's worse is that every bit of data we took wasn't encrypted…Sony stored over 1,000,000 passwords of its customers in plaintext, which means it's just a matter of taking it. This is disgraceful and insecure: they were asking for it, LulzSec added.

This adds pressure on Sony’s current woes in minimizing damages from Aprils cyber attack that compromised 77 million of their PlayStation Network customers. LulzSec claimed to have collected birth dates, street addresses, and unencrypted passwords, then publishing 50,000 users’ information online. The hack also raises questions about Sony’s full effort in keeping data secure. Investigators are looking into the validity of the hacker’s statement whether the data was encrypted or not. Though some may say with enough effort, hackers would be able to compromise the information even with an encryption.

The string of cyber hacks on major companies have brought spotlight attention toward the responsibilities needed for IT security of sensitive data. The U.S. Department of Defense and FBI became involved after this week’s Google hack involving Gmail accounts being compromised.

As for the Japanese company, it will be another uphill struggle for Sony to recover and re-establish trust onto the hearts of their consumers. Sony PlayStation Network issued freebies and welcome back packages to compensate for the downtime outage. It will be interesting to see what steps Sony Pictures will take in rectifying the current and preventing future hacks.