According to a US Congress person, the response by Sony to the cyber attacks on its Playstation Network was not up to par. Industry Gamers reports that during a hearing on the matter in Washington DC today, Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), called Sony"s efforts to inform the public on the attack "half-hearted."
The hearing was not attended by Sony who said that it was still investigating the attack that caused it to shut down the Playstation Network on April 20 and the servers of the MMO division Sony Online Entertainment on Monday. Sony did sent a letter to the US House of Representatives" Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade that attempted to answer the lawmaker"s questions, However, Rep. Mack was clearly not impressed with Sony"s decision not to personally attend the hearing today. She said, "As Chairman of this Subcommittee, I am deeply troubled by these latest data breaches, and the decision by both Epsilon and Sony not to testify today. This is unacceptable." (Epsilon, a marketing research film, admitted to a data breach from one of its subsidiary companies on April 1).
Rep. Mack responded to Sony"s excuse not to appear in the hearing by saying, "Well, what about the millions of American consumers who are still twisting in the wind because of these breaches? They deserve some straight answers, and I am determined to get them..." In particular, Rep. Mack said she was not happy with the way Sony first revealed the news about the data breach to its customers which exposed the personal info of over 70 million subscribers to the Playstation Network. She said, "In Sony’s case, company officials first revealed information about the data breach on their blog. That’s right. A blog. I hate to pile on, but—in essence—Sony put the burden on consumers to "search" for information, instead of accepting the burden of notifying them. If I have anything to do with it, that kind of half-hearted, half-baked response is not going to fly in the future."
Meanwhile the Playstation Network itself is still down even as Sony pledged on Sunday to restore at least some of the network"s features sometime this week. In its letter to the subcommittee today, Sony said it found evidence that the hacker group Anonymous was to blame for the attacks, a claim that Anonymous reps have denied.