LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — A gamer has filed suit against Sony, accusing the company of failing to adequately safeguard user information as the legal fallout for the company's massive data breach gets underway.
According to Dow Jones, the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court's Northern District of California, Kristopher Johns, alleged that Sony was negligent for failing to implement sufficient security and failing to encrypt user data and for failing to notify customers about the extent of the compromise in a timely fashion. Johns and his lawyers are seeking class action status for the suit.
"This has caused, and continues to cause, millions of consumers fear, apprehension, and damage," the lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit stems from an illicit intrusion of Sony's online gaming Playstation Network and Qriocity music service that potentially exposed sensitive customer information, including email addresses, passwords and credit card numbers. Sony discovered that their network had been hacked between April 17 and 19th, and took their network down immediately, but did not notify customers of the extent of the breach until April 26th. Since then, Sony has said that the network would be offline 'indefinitely' as they address security issues. Sony's customer base tops 70 million consumers, which could make this the largest security breach of its kind.
"Hackers can go around, look at these security questions, look at passwords and email addresses, and go to other sites and make very very intelligent guesses about how to hack into other sites," one of the suits attorneys Ira Rothken told Dow Jones. "This could be a viral hacking situation."
This is particularly painful for Sony as the network outage renders some highly-anticipated video game titles unplayable or only partially playable ahead of the busy summer launch cycle.
Sony's stock slipped by 4.48% on Thursday following news of the lawsuit. – I. Courtney
