科技英语新闻：Sony loses 171 million dollars for hacker's attack

BEIJING, May 24 (Xinhuanet) -- The PlayStation Network's shutdown caused by hacker's attack has cost Sony 14 billion Japanese yen, or 171 million U.S. dollars.

Sony revealed the figure on Monday as a part of its overall loss in the massive earthquake and tsunami, 3.2 billion U.S. dollars, in the company's fiscal year ending on March 31, 2011.

The 171 million U.S. dollars cover the lost revenue, the customer compensations, the security and legal enhancement fees and the free games the company offered as a goodwill gesture.

The cyber-attacks, which kept the PlayStation Network offline from April 20 to May 15, involved the theft of personal data from more than 100 million accounts of the gamers.

But the crisis was far from over yet.

"So far, we have not received any confirmed reports of customer identity theft issues, nor confirmed any misuse of credit cards from the cyber-attack," the company said, "Those are key variables, and if that changes, the costs could change."