(England Twitter)-Sony chief Sir Howard Stringer has spoken about the security breach of the PlayStation Network for the first time, apologising to the users affected and unveiling a $1m identity theft insurance policy to protect each user in the future.
The revelation comes just days after Sony issued a public apology following an attack on its PlayStation Network and has led to criticism of the Welsh-born Sir Howard, who has led Sony for six years.
However, Stringer has been forced to take action to try and control the crisis as Sony's share price fell by as much as 4% in trading on Thursday as investors worried about the ultimate cost of the attacks.
The previous security issues included a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which was organised by the vigilante group Anonymous. DDoS attacks merely cause problems for users attempting to access the company's websites; however the second attack, presumed to be spearheaded by a separate group, may have compromised credit card information from millions of subscribers.
Stringer said that the game network would be restored "in the coming days" – the service has been offline for almost three weeks – with all users having to change their account passwords before being able to sign in.
To try to entice users back onto the system, and by way of apology, Stringer reminded gamers that a "welcome back" package is being offered that will include benefits including a month free of its premium-level service "to make up for time lost.
