Sony CEO Howard Stringer says hackers didn't like Sony protecting their intellectual property, and that this is the reason for the PSN hack
Amidst calls for him to resign, Sony CEO Howard Stringer told shareholders that Sony became the target of cyber attacks because they tried to protect their intellectual property.
"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," explained Stringer, who also referred to the attack as "cyber terrorism".
This somewhat contradicts the widely held believe that the PlayStation 3 and the PSN's fortunes took a downturn when Sony decided to remove the OtherOS feature on the PS3. The OtherOS feature, heavily promoted by Sony at the launch of the PS3, allowed hackers an official way to install Linux on the PS3. At the time, Sony said the removal of OtherOS was due to financial reasons, not security reasons. The OtherOS removal angered the hacking and Linux community, and it was then, most believe, that hacking groups Fail0verflow and others turned their attention to hacking the PS3.
And it is also believed the PSN hack is related to the PS3 hack, not just in terms of a series of related events driven by the same goal (to get back at Sony for the removal of OtherOS, and the lawsuit launched against the PS3 hackers), but also on a technical level.
But it appears Stringer wants to correct, or rewrite, history by blaming the PSN hack on Sony's anti-piracy and IP protection stance. Or somehow relating the OtherOS feature and the Linux community to gaming piracy, which might just again anger the hacking community.
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