Sony in “constant battle” with PlayStation hackers, says Yoshida

Online gaming networks like PSN and Xbox Live have recently been the targets of hacking efforts, but these high profile attacks are just a portion of what Sony sees on a regular basis, according to Sony President of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida.

An attack happens every day. Literally every day.

Yoshida says that Sony is in a “constant battle” with PlayStation hackers. Telling Game Informer, “We are always working against these attacks.” “Actually, an attack happens every day. Literally every day. Some days are bigger and some days are smaller. Some days they devise new means, new ways — it’s like cat and mouse. We have a partner company we work with, and we always update the new ways the attacker might deploy, so it is a constant battle,” says Yoshida.

In recent years, Sony saw a high profile breach of their PlayStation Network that leaked millions of customers sensitive information, and shut down the network for weeks. More recently, the PlayStation Network saw an extended outage due to DDOS attacks from a group who called themselves Lizard Squad.

With both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network costing users money on a monthly basis, any downtime for the networks comes under scrutiny from those paying customers. The problem is, there just doesn’t seem to be a clear defense for things like Denial of Service attacks, despite them having any real security threats for the users.