Sony defends response time to hacker breach

New York: Sony Corp defended its response time a hacker break-in of its video game network that led to the theft of more than 100 million user accounts.

"This was an unprecedented attack," Sony chief executive Howard Stringer told reporters on Tuesday. "A lot of these breaches are never reported by companies or it takes companies a month. You're telling me my week wasn't fast enoough?"

The global Japanese electronics conglomerate said it expected to monetary charges from the break-in.

"There's a charge for the system being down, a charge for identity theft protection," Stringer said. "The charges mount up but there are no numbers yet."