*ren* PSN Down, Customer Info Compromised

[Shifty Geezer]

Here's an example of the real-world cost of this hack to gamers. Other than being offline for 3 weeks, DnD: Daggerdale is releasing today on Live, but of course PSN is down. And when PSN comes back, there's a backlog of content. I wanted Under Siege, but I'm a one-game kinda guy, and wouldn't have these concurrently. And not knowing what's coming out when, I don't know what to buy.

 

[goonergaz]

I was hoping to see something similar to apps like the Ipod Touch on my PS3 hoping that Sony would embrace homebrew scene rather than punish it. When the PS3 first launched with the inclusion of OtherOS, it appeared that they were heading in that direction. It's ironic to see such a turnaround.

I'm confused, didn't we have 'other OS' for a few years and nothing came of it (other than the inital hack which prompted Sony to remove it!?)

 

[BadTB25]

I'm confused, didn't we have 'other OS' for a few years and nothing came of it (other than the inital hack which prompted Sony to remove it!?)

I thought the OtherOS was the start of Sony embracing the open source model not that OtherOS was where these apps would reside. When you look at the PS3 UI, it appeared tailor made for that kind of interactivity. Of the 3 console manufacturers, Sony appeared to be the best positioned since it included a HDD in every sku.

I say turnaround, because to me it appears that Sony has become more draconian to anyone wanting to enhance the PS3 in a non-sanctioned way. They've removed OtherOS and have sued hackers trying to open up the system in a non-pirated way.

 

[-tkf-]

Here's an example of the real-world cost of this hack to gamers. Other than being offline for 3 weeks, DnD: Daggerdale is releasing today on Live, but of course PSN is down. And when PSN comes back, there's a backlog of content. I wanted Under Siege, but I'm a one-game kinda guy, and wouldn't have these concurrently. And not knowing what's coming out when, I don't know what to buy.

PS Store should be up soonish? i hopeish..

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I say turnaround, because to me it appears that Sony has become more draconian to anyone wanting to enhance the PS3 in a non-sanctioned way. They've removed OtherOS and have sued hackers trying to open up the system in a non-pirated way.

Because those hack lead to piracy. The development things like PSS suggest Sony may court a more open future, but the constant threat of piracy puts them off. It's as much the hackers holding things back as corporate draconianism.

That's also going OT. There's a whole thread about the ethics and business motives of the hacks in the Tech Ethics forum.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PS Store should be up soonish? i hopeish..

They're still aiming for the end of the month, but there could be another 2 or 3 weeks delay on Daggerdale as Sony are playing catchup with the previous month's scheduled content.

 

[Brad Grenz]

You're right about that. In a Eurogamer news report about Sony's 5 hours of timetabled E3 keynote, some chump keeps on posting about these latest Sony hacks. The bad will is going to be going around and around. Is this all coming under the Anonymous umbrella? Are they claiming responsibility as an organisation, or is it just individual(s)?

It seems very much that the ongoing attacks one Sony website after Sony website have to be considered part of an organized campaign. The Anonymous label may have lost its meaning with the infighting that has occurred in that organization. Last I heard the radical element had seized control, and these were the people who wanted to go further that DDOS attacks against Sony. The former leadership may have disavowed the theft of user information, but the people doing it now (and possibly responsible for the original PSN breach) clearly have no compunction about harming user in their ludicrous crusade against Sony.

It doesn't help that there is also a concerted hacker PR effort working in tandem with the actual hacks. If it was motivated by profit, these attacks wouldn't be getting publicized. But these hacks are occurring and getting revealed publicly instantly. In all likelihood the people behind the hacks are reporting them to the media as they happen, and then going out across the internet to paint a picture of Sony as incompetent in every forum and comment thread they can find. Anecdotally, when I published that story on deathindustrial's findings on bitmob there was a guy who absolutely lost his shit in the comments there, and on N4G, trying to convince me I had to retract it because it clashed with the carefully cultivated image of Sony as negligent. Based on the evidence he shared in an attempt to convince me, it was pretty clear he was part of the Anonymous movement himself. 'Course, the evidence didn't actually prove what he claimed, which has been the problem all along in this. But you have ignorant media repeating everything they hear and fanboys latching on to everything negative thing they want to believe and never letting go.

That said, it's the law of diminishing returns at this point. The more the hackers hound Sony the more sympathy Sony will recieve and the diminishing importance and size of the hacks have, like I said, make them look petty and meaningless.

 

[goonergaz]

I say turnaround, because to me it appears that Sony has become more draconian to anyone wanting to enhance the PS3 in a non-sanctioned way. They've removed OtherOS and have sued hackers trying to open up the system in a non-pirated way.

Well wouldn't you? I mean, let's say you give the neighbours a spare set of keys to your house - if they moved in and started living there would you not be a bit upset?

Sony tried to be "open" and a few people "abused" the system - as ever, it's the actions of the few that then make "everyone else" suffer.

 

[goonergaz]

That's also going OT. There's a whole thread about the ethics and business motives of the hacks in the Tech Ethics forum.

Sorry, I read this after I replied

 

[-tkf-]

At leats someone is trying to count..

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21725

11 hacked sites.. i like the headline.. "Should Sony quit the net"

I guess Sony should focus on getting more stuff centralized so they can act faster .. after this perfect storm is over

 

[Malo]

Good evening gentlemen !

Found out from GAF that the free Identity Theft Protection sponsored by Sony may be ready, and can be activated from here:
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/identity-theft-protection/

The problem with it is that the service will begin upon registration, whereas due to the leak of information it could be deemed to have occurred prior to start of service?

 

[Nesh]

I see what your saying , but your wrong on how i see it.


I see it as the hackers showing us how bad sony's security was and how it was a complete fubar from every aspect of sony with regards to IT safe guards.

I think this is horrible , but you know what, at the end of the day hopefully this gets goverments to wake up and put pressure on sony and others to keep competent it security .

In fact if sony isn't fixing the issues and is brining systems back on that aren't really fixed or have other problems i hope the hackers hit them again and again until sony finally learns.

I hope to god that MS , nintendo , valve and everyone else is out there watching this and has teams at work trying to find out where they screwed up and plug the holes and if they aren't , then i hope someone hacks them to show them they aren't safe either.

The way you see it is utopian.
You seem to think that these hackers are a group of moral people who woke up one day, and decided that out of the countless of popular giant corporations, they should pick only Sony as one of the worse evil ones and the only ones with bad security, hack it to smithereens, create millions or billions of loses to them, endanger the work of thousands of employees, ruin the experience of simple consumers, steal personal information of said consumers, make another competitive and potentially evil corporation more powerful to destroy competition and competitive products.....all for the good for.....the consumer? And during the time that Japan has been hit by an earthquake and tsunami.
If they wanted to protect the industry and the people they could have showed signs of breach and to inform Sony of potential vulnerabilities. But its apparent they have an agenda

What do you expect them to do?

They are going against a major corporation who they believe is abusing the court systems to unfairly hamper a product that the user has purchased.

Sony decided to sue the hackers that allowed the system to be more open, but specifically did not easily enable piracy (geohot and graff).

I do not believe in piracy, but neither do I believe that we should not be able to enhance a product that I have purchased via homebrew.

Google, MS and others (at least recently) have offered rewards to hackers that have pointed out security holes. I have to believe that this was much more effective while at the same time has generated more of a positive vibe.

Its doubtful that Sony would have sued someone who enhanced their product for personal use only. But Geohot decided to show off and release to the public an enhancement which he and everyone else knew with absolute certainty it was going to be mass used for piracy. He thought he would get away with it probably due to not suffering consequences with the iphone jailbreak

 

[patsu]

The problem with it is that the service will begin upon registration, whereas due to the leak of information it could be deemed to have occurred prior to start of service?

The hackers will need to hack the original email account. Alternatively, the PSN user can change his/her email address using "Account Management" in XMB. ^_^

For prior incidents, I think they'll need to talk to Sony. The protection is still useful for present and future incidents, up to one year.

 

[deathindustrial]

So I guess it is just a matter of time then before sonycreativesoftware.com goes down as well?

I had to call their support line recently to get Movie Studio / DVD Architect registered due to their poorly implemented install process and Sony's support staff were conditioned to expect the registration servers to not work reliably (I was literally told that sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, we don't know why, here's another code). When your own staff *expects* your infrastructure to be flakey that leaves plenty of cover for an attacker to hide their own noisy entrance.

Cheers

 

[eastmen]

The way you see it is utopian.
You seem to think that these hackers are a group of moral people who woke up one day, and decided that out of the countless of popular giant corporations, they should pick only Sony as one of the worse evil ones and the only ones with bad security, hack it to smithereens, create millions or billions of loses to them, endanger the work of thousands of employees, ruin the experience of simple consumers, steal personal information of said consumers, make another competitive and potentially evil corporation more powerful to destroy competition and competitive products.....all for the good for.....the consumer? And during the time that Japan has been hit by an earthquake and tsunami.
If they wanted to protect the industry and the people they could have showed signs of breach and to inform Sony of potential vulnerabilities. But its apparent they have an agenda

Thats bull , I don't think the hackers are moral at all, I know exactly why they are doing it and thats cause they can make money off these lists and mabye to a lesser extent to embarss sony for going after Geohot and other hackers.


The problem here is while you want me to thik of the cost of thousands of employees which is very sad , like i said my cousin works for sony bmg here in Jersey , however what about all these people who have had their information stolen . This is sonys fault . There is no way around it , yes the hackers are douches but sony are douches also , how can you have a failure of security over 11 diffrent platforms ?

Major companys like sony don't seem to care at all about the consumer , our information is taken because of that lack of care. There are to many companys practicing bad security with our information and there is a scary like of repurcusions when the data is stolen.

This hopefully gets everyones act together.


At the end of the day . Sony was stupid for not practicing safe IT security and because of that tens of millions of people world wide were harmed.

This is unaceptable and sony needs to learn from this , MS needs to learn from this , Macys needs to learn from this , Exxon needs to learn from this . Insert company name here has to learn from this. So that this is a thing of the past.

 

[Nesh]

Thats bull , I don't think the hackers are moral at all, I know exactly why they are doing it and thats cause they can make money off these lists and mabye to a lesser extent to embarss sony for going after Geohot and other hackers.


The problem here is while you want me to thik of the cost of thousands of employees which is very sad , like i said my cousin works for sony bmg here in Jersey , however what about all these people who have had their information stolen . This is sonys fault . There is no way around it , yes the hackers are douches but sony are douches also , how can you have a failure of security over 11 diffrent platforms ?

Major companys like sony don't seem to care at all about the consumer , our information is taken because of that lack of care. There are to many companys practicing bad security with our information and there is a scary like of repurcusions when the data is stolen.

This hopefully gets everyones act together.


At the end of the day . Sony was stupid for not practicing safe IT security and because of that tens of millions of people world wide were harmed.

This is unaceptable and sony needs to learn from this , MS needs to learn from this , Macys needs to learn from this , Exxon needs to learn from this . Insert company name here has to learn from this. So that this is a thing of the past.

Not only you have no idea how many other companies can be hacked no matter their measures or should be hacked going by your logic but there is no logic at all in it. You yourself said that they should be hacked again and again ( while you ignore the consequences) so that Sony learns their lesson and they strengthen their security. Its the same as saying that you wish some groups become a serious thread to your country that will attack it again and again putting at risk the lives of citizens, with the possibility of destroying it completely so that all the defense holes are exposed because you dislike your government and should learn their lesson.

It makes more sense to hope that someone with the know-how like those hackers informed Sony of the security holes to patch them up or called officials to inspect Sony and wish that nobody will face the ugly consequences. But you hope that we should all face consequences so that they learn their lesson

I dont want multiple oil spills so that BP or Exxon Mobil learns their lesson
I want the problem patched so that we dont see them. Greenpeace wouldnt have contributed to oil spills to show how environmental unfriendly their measures are

If I hate a company though yeah, I d wish to see it destroyed. Even if my cousin worked at a branch of it

 

[joker454]

So I guess it is just a matter of time then before sonycreativesoftware.com goes down as well?

Yikes, I sure hope not! I make extensive use of Vegas Pro 10 along with a fleet of Sony cameras for my business, and the Sony forums are very useful for support questions. So far I've only noticed that it's been running slower lately, but it's still up fortunately.

 

[temesgen]

Not only you have no idea how many other companies can be hacked no matter their measures or should be hacked going by your logic but there is no logic at all in it. You yourself said that they should be hacked again and again ( while you ignore the consequences) so that Sony learns their lesson and they strengthen their security. Its the same as saying that you wish some groups become a serious thread to your country that will attack it again and again putting at risk the lives of citizens, with the possibility of destroying it completely so that all the defense holes are exposed because you dislike your government and should learn their lesson.

It makes more sense to hope that someone with the know-how like those hackers informed Sony of the security holes to patch them up or called officials to inspect Sony and wish that nobody will face the ugly consequences. But you hope that we should all face consequences so that they learn their lesson

I dont want multiple oil spills so that BP or Exxon Mobil learns their lesson
I want the problem patched so that we dont see them. Greenpeace wouldnt have contributed to oil spills to show how environmental unfriendly their measures are

If I hate a company though yeah, I d wish to see it destroyed. Even if my cousin worked at a branch of it

Excellent point, earlier this week when the point was raised that the breach and additional hacks were part of an organized attempt to hurt Sony (which is somewhat unprecedented and says as much about the talent and desire of the hacker community as it does about Sony's security) people were questioning the soundness of that argument. Now the argument is that attacks are good for Sony because it forces them to increase their security. I don't wish this attack on MS, Nintendo or any other company for that matter and it is fair to question how well any of big 3 would hold up to such efforts.

 

[mrcorbo]

Excellent point, earlier this week when the point was raised that the breach and additional hacks were part of an organized attempt to hurt Sony (which is somewhat unprecedented and says as much about the talent and desire of the hacker community as it does about Sony's security) people were questioning the soundness of that argument. Now the argument is that attacks are good for Sony because it forces them to increase their security. I don't wish this attack on MS, Nintendo or any other company for that matter and it is fair to question how well any of big 3 would hold up to such efforts.

Still not convinced all are related. The character of some of the attacks are notably different than others. There is a conspicuous amount of taunting in some that clearly indicates that those attacks are aimed at embarrassing Sony, while some others don't seem to have been so obviously launched with that objective in mind.

 

[eastmen]

Not only you have no idea how many other companies can be hacked no matter their measures or should be hacked going by your logic but there is no logic at all in it. You yourself said that they should be hacked again and again ( while you ignore the consequences) so that Sony learns their lesson and they strengthen their security. Its the same as saying that you wish some groups become a serious thread to your country that will attack it again and again putting at risk the lives of citizens, with the possibility of destroying it completely so that all the defense holes are exposed because you dislike your government and should learn their lesson.

What other companys out there have had 11 diffrent parts of its company hacked in 40 days ?

There are many huge targets out there , why hasn't amazon or newegg or ms live been hacked like this ?

Why is Japan telling sony they can't bring back psn in japan ?

The reason is simple , while there will allways be security holes , other companys are keeping up with patches that close many known exploits , many companys even with that practice still highly encrypt their user data so even if the data is taken , it would be worthless .

Sony didn't do these things and now the hackers are having a field day.

At the end of the day , no one at sony is being killed or tourtured . It might suck that people will loose jobs , but they are just jobs. I lost my job 2 years ago and i got a new one. It takes time an dit sucks yes , but they are jobs.

i don't see them as more important than manys secuirt and cc information which will cost other busniesses billions of dollars also because of sonys stupidity.

It makes more sense to hope that someone with the know-how like those hackers informed Sony of the security holes to patch them up or called officials to inspect Sony and wish that nobody will face the ugly consequences. But you hope that we should all face consequences so that they learn their lesson

It wont happen , people who are doing this want to make money. Sony should be paying people to find exploits just like ms , google and apple do

I dont want multiple oil spills so that BP or Exxon Mobil learns their lesson
I want the problem patched so that we dont see them. Greenpeace wouldnt have contributed to oil spills to show how environmental unfriendly their measures are

Yet we have had multiple oil spills . It took a major one in the gulf for anyone to take notice and more restrictions and safe guards put into place. No one ever adds more protection because of a pristine safty record.

If I hate a company though yeah, I d wish to see it destroyed. Even if my cousin worked at a branch of it

Yea and I guess you hate people who use the sony service even if lives are ruined due to the information sony was entrusted with and failed to protect.

Even if you are one of those people .


Look I can do it also.

Sony aren't good guys here , spin it as much as you want , they wont ever be good guys and for many who have had data stolen and cc replaced , or companys footing the bill to do this , its an insult plain and simple when you defend sonys role in all this .