Chris Brook

For a company that almost single-handedly created the
consumer electronics industry with blockbusters like the Walkman, Sony has had
its share of strategic and public relations face plants in the last decade, with IT security being just one
flash point. From its infamous digital rights management rootkit to flaming
laptop batteries to the latest breaches of PlayStation Network and Station.com,
here are some of Sony’s biggest security woes.

After a bruising series of revelations about location tracking features on mobile devices running their operating systems, Apple and Google will send executives to Capitol Hill to talk to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law about cell phone privacy.

Its doubtful that executives at Sony thought too much (if at
all) about their decision to rescind an obscure feature dubbed “OtherOS” that
had been added to the PlayStation 3 System Software soon after its launch. The
feature allowed other operating systems, specifically Linux, to be run on the
device, allowing users to play games from the PS3 console and use it as a home
computer with a compatible USB keyboard, mouse and VGA adapter.

Just two years after its first recall, Sony found itself in
hot water with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for yet
another batch of laptop batteries that were overheating. A separate issue than
the one that prompted the massive 2006 recall, the 2008 incident affected
around 100,000 notebook battery packs that used Sony’s 2.15Ah lithium ion
cells. The fault was linked batteries sold in 2004 and 2005 and linked to
around 40 overheating incidents.

This was just the first in what would prove to be a string
of embarrassments to the Japanese firm over the manufacture of laptop
batteries. It began with reports in both Japan and the U.S. about
Sony-manufactured lithium ion batteries that were overheating and, in some
cases, bursting into flames. The company ultimately recalled and replaced
millions of the defective batteries which were used by laptop manufacturers
like Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Sony and Toshiba.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday settled charges against two companies, Ceridian Corporation and Lookout Services, Inc., provided they implement an ample information security program and agree to have audits performed on their company every other year for 20 years.

Mozilla has released the first update to their Firefox browser since making Firefox 4 available in March. Firefox 4.0.1 fixes three security and stability issues, two that are rated critical.