Sony believes it was targeted by hackers because it tried to protect its intellectual property, CEO Howard Stringer told a shareholders' meeting.
No one has claimed responsibility for the massive hacking attack in April, in which details of 77 million PlayStation videogame user accounts were leaked, but many have speculated the attack was sparked by Sony's efforts to prevent unauthorised modifications to PS3 game consoles.
"We believe that we first became the subject of attack because we tried to protect our IP (intellectual property), our content, in this case videogames," Stringer told shareholders at Tuesday's meeting in response to a question about the background to the incident.
These are our corporate assets, and there are those that don't want us to protect them, they want everything to be free
"These are our corporate assets, and there are those that don't want us to protect them, they want everything to be free," he said, adding that many other corporations and organisations had also been hacked.
Stringer did not comment directly when another shareholder asked him to step down to allow the company to make a fresh start after what is believed to be the world's biggest ever security breach. The shareholder's comments were greeted with scattered applause.
Stringer said only that his foremost responsibility was to oversee the company's development and to nurture the next generation of management.
Anger remains
Sony says PlayStation Network usage has returned to levels about 90% of those before the security breach, but some users remain angry.
A court case filed in the United States this month accuses Sony of laying off employees in a unit responsible for network security two weeks before the hacking incident.
Sony also spent lavishly on security to protect its own corporate information while failing to do the same for its customers' data, the proposed class action lawsuit alleges.
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