Sony wins ‘Pwnie’ award at hacker conference

Sony won the Pwnie award for ‘epic fail’ at the Black Hat hacker conference. The Pwnies are the awards for the best hacks of the past year. Hackers group LulzSec failed to cash in on two nominations and saw Stuxnet win.

Sony won the ‘Pwnie’ because of the security holes uncovered last year. Among other things, the PlayStation Network hack, in which the account information of tens of millions of gamers was stolen, are mentioned at the motivation to designate Sony as the winner.

The creators of worm Stuxnet received the award for ‘epic 0wnage’. Stuxnet has been used, among other things, to break into the systems that controlled the Iranian nuclear reprocessing centrifuges. That country therefore believes that Stuxnet was created by enemy countries, such as the United States.

The Pwnies are the awards for most appealing hacks and were presented this week during the Black Hat hacker conference in the American city of Las Vegas. LulzSec, the hacker group that has been in the news a lot with hacks in recent months, won nothing. A spokesperson say told Forbes that the profit for Stuxnet is justified. “Stuxnet was a great piece of work. But its creators probably had millions of dollars in funding, while we were just doing it for fun.”