Sony looks to issue reward to catch hackers

Sony is considering offering a reward to catch those involved in the breach of its network which may have exposed the personal details of up to 100 million customers, as another report suggests that members of online hacktivist group Anonymous may indeed be behind the attack.

All Things Digital reported on Friday that, although senior executives at Sony have not given their assent to the offering of a bounty, the option is still on the table and if pursued would be done so in co-operation with the FBI and other law enforcement authorities globally.

The news proves how seriously Sony is taking the incident and how desperately it needs some good PR to get its customers back onside.

The news came on the same day as the Financial Times reported that two members of Anonymous admitted that some rogue members of the online collective may well have been behind the attacks.

Anonymous was embroiled in a very public spat with Sony, which led to its launching the OpSony denial-of-service campaign against several sites belonging to the company.

However, according to the FT report, details of a technical vulnerability in Sony's network were discussed on an Anonymous chat room.

It is likely that one or several individuals took the OpSony campaign one stage too far and launched the information stealing hack on the firm, the Anonymous source suggested.

"The hacker that did this was supporting OpSony's movements," they told the FT.

However, it is still unclear whether this is true and even Sony has suggested that the attack may have been incorrectly blamed on Anonymous.