House: "Ugly" hacker threats "ironically" spurred by IP protection

Sony Computer Entertainment boss Andrew House feels Sony's legal stance against hackers is in gamers' best interests, and finds negative response somewhat ironic.

"There were some very ugly threats going on, and we became the target," the executive told CVG.

"The irony, for me, is that we became the target because we thought, I think quite fairly, that we were trying to protect our intellectual property rights from piracy. But it was ironically that which led a certain sector of opinion to think that, somehow, we were acting against their best interests."

House said Sony is now in "very solid company with many other institutions and companies" also at risk of of hacker activity.

"That will be an ongoing challenge, and I think it's one we'll have to take extremely seriously. Bit it galvanised us, right up to the very top of the company," he added.

"We've hired an extremely experienced Chief Information Security Officer at the corporate level, not just on the PlayStation level. We've revamped our systems to the best of our ability, to try to ensure that this kind of thing, as far as possible, can be prevented."

After the PlayStation Network was compromised in mid-April 2011, the service went offline for over a month. Sony could not find evidence of user's personal and financial information being compromised, but urged users to take security measures. Although no individual or group was deemed responsible for the attack, it followed weeks of activity by hacktivist group Anonymous in response to Sony's lawsuits against PlayStation 3 hackers.