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Forums - Sony Discussion - Sony hack could cost Sony $318 per account!?

gergroy on 27 April 2011

you know, I always thought the military grade security that xbox live has was a bit excessive.  However, it kind of make sense now after what has happend to the psn...

 

edit:  I'm also curious as to how this is going to affect Sony's E3 conference.  Do you think they will talk about it at all there?



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imaprettyhotguy on 27 April 2011
youarebadatgames said:

Costs: Legal fees, security consulting fees, settlements from the class actions, restitution for service interruption, lost sales, credibility with users and publishers, insurance, etc.  One thing is for certain, skimping out on network security/infrastructure definitely came back to bite them in the ass.

Sony could have covered this up, but if the hacker were to publically claim responsibility and show proof they would have incurred even more damages in addition to just the leaked data - that would be criminal.  As long as the possibility exists that the data has been compromised, companies MUST disclose that information.

It's unbelievable that people are still in denial defending Sony.  Guess what, there WAS an intrusion, and there is the possibility of a compromise of personal information and credit card numbers, they said so themselves.  The forensic investigation may never be conclusive, but absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.

Actually the absence of evidence is the only way to prove absence, of course you have to look, and this stuff happens all the time, do you have any idea how many ways people get stuff like their name and address, it's not that huge of a deal, and class action lawsuit can sue for them not meeting industry standards at best (assuming they didn't meet them) from what I understand so yeah, not that big of a deal there isn't even 1 confirmed case of anything happening to anyone, hell not even 1 reported case lol 



Rath on 27 April 2011
irstupid said:
Rath said:
irstupid said:
 

thats not how legal action works.  one person would win and n oone else would be able to sue.  you can't be sued over the same thing twice.

and you are also missing what these costs include.  thse numbers are mostly guestimates of missing revenue or lost sales.  I mean during this down time, sony could have missed out on getting a few billion in psn sales.  meanwhile they are incuring a few billion more in costs.  Thus what would have been a 3 billion revenue, turns into a 0 billion revenue and 3 billion expense.  a 6 billion dollars cost overall.   and lets not forget stock.  these also estimate a loss in stock value.

is sony going to have to fork oer 23 billion dolalrs?  hell no. 

No, that's not how legal action works. Each individual is allowed to sue for damages to them. You're thinking double jeopardy I think, which is criminal law (you cannot be tried for the same crime twice, but criminal and civil law are very different).

Though most likely something with this many people affected would lead to a class action suit.

no i'm not.  when cigarette companies got sued they were sued on behalf of EVERYONE.  that is what would happen here.  Sony woudl be sued on behalf of EVERYONE.

if joe bloe goes to court and wins against sony for a few million dollars, i can't go to court with same charge and hope to win.  They would say no, that joe bloe won the case and he represents everyone effected by this case.


I'm no expert on American law but I'm fairly confident that if you are not a member of the class action you still have the right to individually litigate against Sony. However as I said this would normally done under class action, in which case Joe Blog is sueing from the start on behalf of everyone and the court would take into account the number of people in the class action.



irstupid on 27 April 2011
Baalzamon said:
irstupid said:

thats my point.  in court sony will be held accountable for 77 million malicious acts.  they aren't going to be able to prove if one is real or not. 

and i wouldn't be surprised if they are close to a billion now already.  How much you think they have spent fixign it so far?  how much have they lost in psn sales, how much has their stock gone down in the past week?

I truly have no clue what software costs to fix/rebuild, but even if they were to have 5000 people right now fixing the server.  Lets just say they average $100,000 a year.  You are talking about wages of ~$10,000,000 thus far.  And I have no clue what psn sales accumulate to, but even if they are $2 million per day for instance (a random guess), you're talking ~$20,000,000 more thus far for lost revenue.  As for their stock, it was 29.25 on April 18th, and is now 28.93, which is just over a 1% loss.  I'm not totally sure how this works, but if you take the market cap of ~$29 billion, 1% of that is ~290 million.

So overall costs are up to $320,000,000 with my analysis, if stock changes are included.  Now, lets just say other costs associated with this, PR, the security firm, etc., make it add up to a total cost of $400,000,000 thus far.

Now, obviously they will still have further costs of fixing it, but the major cost that could approach is a potential lawsuit.  I'm not very knowledgeable on law, but how big of a lawsuit could possibly be filed against Sony, if, say, all 70 users teamed up saying their identity (name, address, birthday, potentially credit cards, etc) was stolen?  I really do doubt that it would get up into the billions of dollars.  You are talking something that would just make Sony file for bankruptcy, which does absolutely no good.

yea i know what you are saying, it makes no sense.  I can't fathom how i could even spend 23 billion dollars.  i have no idea how that gets considered.  it dosen't seem fathomable.  i mean what was sony's revenue for the entire year last year and the entire year expenses. 

i'm not the one making this 23 billion up.  i'm just trying to justify where the spending comes from.  Hell look at us government.  they spend how many billion getting a few million people jobs. it was AVERAGE to 160,000 per job created by the stimulus.

hell you give me 160,000 and i could hire way more than 1 person  but somehow it cost them on AVERAGE 160,000 per person to ge tthem jobs.

there is no point in trying to figure out how this 22 billion number will come to be.  it won't make any sense



gergroy on 27 April 2011
Rath said:
irstupid said:
Rath said:
irstupid said:
 

thats not how legal action works.  one person would win and n oone else would be able to sue.  you can't be sued over the same thing twice.

and you are also missing what these costs include.  thse numbers are mostly guestimates of missing revenue or lost sales.  I mean during this down time, sony could have missed out on getting a few billion in psn sales.  meanwhile they are incuring a few billion more in costs.  Thus what would have been a 3 billion revenue, turns into a 0 billion revenue and 3 billion expense.  a 6 billion dollars cost overall.   and lets not forget stock.  these also estimate a loss in stock value.

is sony going to have to fork oer 23 billion dolalrs?  hell no. 

No, that's not how legal action works. Each individual is allowed to sue for damages to them. You're thinking double jeopardy I think, which is criminal law (you cannot be tried for the same crime twice, but criminal and civil law are very different).

Though most likely something with this many people affected would lead to a class action suit.

no i'm not.  when cigarette companies got sued they were sued on behalf of EVERYONE.  that is what would happen here.  Sony woudl be sued on behalf of EVERYONE.

if joe bloe goes to court and wins against sony for a few million dollars, i can't go to court with same charge and hope to win.  They would say no, that joe bloe won the case and he represents everyone effected by this case.


I'm no expert on American law but I'm fairly confident that if you are not a member of the class action you still have the right to individually litigate against Sony. However as I said this would normally done under class action, in which case Joe Blog is sueing from the start on behalf of everyone and the court would take into account the number of people in the class action.

depends on the nature of the class action suit.  Most class actions of this magnitude would autimatically opt in all affected parties.  Not that a case like this would ever end up with a verdict.  Sony would end up setteling by agreeing to give everybody a free psn game or something lame like that.  



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irstupid on 27 April 2011
Rath said:
irstupid said:
Rath said:
irstupid said:
 

thats not how legal action works.  one person would win and n oone else would be able to sue.  you can't be sued over the same thing twice.

and you are also missing what these costs include.  thse numbers are mostly guestimates of missing revenue or lost sales.  I mean during this down time, sony could have missed out on getting a few billion in psn sales.  meanwhile they are incuring a few billion more in costs.  Thus what would have been a 3 billion revenue, turns into a 0 billion revenue and 3 billion expense.  a 6 billion dollars cost overall.   and lets not forget stock.  these also estimate a loss in stock value.

is sony going to have to fork oer 23 billion dolalrs?  hell no. 

No, that's not how legal action works. Each individual is allowed to sue for damages to them. You're thinking double jeopardy I think, which is criminal law (you cannot be tried for the same crime twice, but criminal and civil law are very different).

Though most likely something with this many people affected would lead to a class action suit.

no i'm not.  when cigarette companies got sued they were sued on behalf of EVERYONE.  that is what would happen here.  Sony woudl be sued on behalf of EVERYONE.

if joe bloe goes to court and wins against sony for a few million dollars, i can't go to court with same charge and hope to win.  They would say no, that joe bloe won the case and he represents everyone effected by this case.


I'm no expert on American law but I'm fairly confident that if you are not a member of the class action you still have the right to individually litigate against Sony. However as I said this would normally done under class action, in which case Joe Blog is sueing from the start on behalf of everyone and the court would take into account the number of people in the class action.

that's what would happen in this case.  joe blo would be considered to be suing on behalf of everyone, and thsu where this 77 million will take into effect.

outside of court, this 77 million means nothing.  actually i woudl think the number would be higher as i said before.  Sony needs to figure out a fix that will get all 117 sony consoles that use psn to be safe and secure



irstupid on 27 April 2011
gergroy said:
Rath said:
irstupid said:
Rath said:
irstupid said:
 

thats not how legal action works.  one person would win and n oone else would be able to sue.  you can't be sued over the same thing twice.

and you are also missing what these costs include.  thse numbers are mostly guestimates of missing revenue or lost sales.  I mean during this down time, sony could have missed out on getting a few billion in psn sales.  meanwhile they are incuring a few billion more in costs.  Thus what would have been a 3 billion revenue, turns into a 0 billion revenue and 3 billion expense.  a 6 billion dollars cost overall.   and lets not forget stock.  these also estimate a loss in stock value.

is sony going to have to fork oer 23 billion dolalrs?  hell no. 

No, that's not how legal action works. Each individual is allowed to sue for damages to them. You're thinking double jeopardy I think, which is criminal law (you cannot be tried for the same crime twice, but criminal and civil law are very different).

Though most likely something with this many people affected would lead to a class action suit.

no i'm not.  when cigarette companies got sued they were sued on behalf of EVERYONE.  that is what would happen here.  Sony woudl be sued on behalf of EVERYONE.

if joe bloe goes to court and wins against sony for a few million dollars, i can't go to court with same charge and hope to win.  They would say no, that joe bloe won the case and he represents everyone effected by this case.


I'm no expert on American law but I'm fairly confident that if you are not a member of the class action you still have the right to individually litigate against Sony. However as I said this would normally done under class action, in which case Joe Blog is sueing from the start on behalf of everyone and the court would take into account the number of people in the class action.

depends on the nature of the class action suit.  Most class actions of this magnitude would autimatically opt in all affected parties.  Not that a case like this would ever end up with a verdict.  Sony would end up setteling by agreeing to give everybody a free psn game or something lame like that.  

not sure if they would be able to get by with that kind of settelement when this is deadling with personal info being out there.

i can see if this was the microsoft case where hackers managed to steal other peoples points, but this is personal info.  It doesn't exactly have a monitary value

not sure what 2010 is, but i saw earlier in 2009 that 11 million people get their id stolen every year.  again not sure if that was U.S. only or world as well.  too lazy to look it up quick again.  But look at this year.  out of those 11 million, how can you prove that none of them were due to psn?  now imagine if that 11 million is U.S. only.  you have a crap load more people claiming it was psn's falut.  And i also dont know how world court works.  Can sony be sued in u.S., europe, australia, japan, ect?  how do they pay out when it deals with millions of users in many countries.  One thing for sure is that these lawyers will be getting paid very hansomely



yo_john117 on 27 April 2011

I don't think the amount Sony will have to pay out will be anything close to 23 billion....but it still will be pretty substantial. I would imagine it would cost them at least a billion or two.



youarebadatgames on 27 April 2011
imaprettyhotguy said:

Actually the absence of evidence is the only way to prove absence, of course you have to look, and this stuff happens all the time, do you have any idea how many ways people get stuff like their name and address, it's not that huge of a deal, and class action lawsuit can sue for them not meeting industry standards at best (assuming they didn't meet them) from what I understand so yeah, not that big of a deal there isn't even 1 confirmed case of anything happening to anyone, hell not even 1 reported case lol 


Given that they already have a lawsuit going that's being setup for class action, I'm pretty sure there will be a mechanism whereby users who do suffer damages will be able to get additional compensation.  All they'd likely have to show is a credit card used on PSN with fradulent activity, as civil cases only require a preponderance of evidence.

I'm fairly certain if the case gets to trial Sony's PSN security will be found to be not meeting industry standards, as that is the consensus opinion among most of the security researchers and experts, but it's more likely they will settle.  A lot of the vulnerabilities were already known and the information was circulated among the hacker groups.  That Sony did not adequately address the issue in time speaks volumes for itself.



ameratsu on 27 April 2011

Update on the situation. Sony's losses may be worse than initially feared. This is bad.



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