Hacker Steals PSN Personal Information

[Branden]

A hacker has obtained the personal information of PlayStation Network account holders and subscribers of the Qriocity streaming service, Sony said in a message to customers Tuesday.

Sony's investigations over the past week determined that an "unauthorized person" had obtained users' names, home addresses, e-mail addresses, birth dates and passwords, according to a statement being sent to all account holders.

The attack also has crippled Sony's PlayStation Network, which has some 70 million subscribers and has been down since April 20. The network lets customers download video games from the Web and play against each other online.

"While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility," said Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment, which manage the two services, in a joint statement.

The hacker could have taken credit card numbers, card expiration dates, billing addresses, answers to security questions and purchase history, but not credit-card security codes, they said.

Sony is encouraging customers "to protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss" by reviewing credit-card statements. The company also suggested that some customers may want to place a "fraud alert" with credit bureaus.

Sony did not say how many accounts had been compromised. A spokeswoman declined to comment Tuesday.

Some subscribers reacted angrily to the news.

"You waited a WEEK to tell us our (personal) information was compromised?" one PlayStation user wrote on a Sony blog. "That should have been said last Thursday" -- the day when Sony first acknowledged the issue.

The intrusions occurred between April 17 and 19, according to the statement. On April 20, Sony switched off the PlayStation and Qriocity online services, which have remained in the dark.

Users and paid subscribers were also mostly in the dark until Tuesday about the reason for the lengthy outage or about when services would be reinstated.

Sony initially said its PS network would be be back online within one to two days.

On Tuesday, PlayStation spokesman Patrick Seybold wrote in a statement that it could take another week before they "expect to restore some services."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gad ... index.html

I was really thinking about getting me a PS3 then this happened. I just don't know if I can trust them anymore. If they can allow something like this to happen, why should I?

Discuss.

 

[Gimgak]

Sony failed. Shame the creator of the PS1 around a week ago and because of their incompetency no one cares about that but PSN. To go from introducing to ps1 and having the ps2 to "oops your credit cards r belong to haxx0rs" is sad.

 

[death180]

You can't do much with JUST a credit card number, and besides if someone is dumb enough not to keep an eye on their credit cards all the time then I won't be surprised when their identity is stolen or the card is maxed out.

As for me, I don't have a PS3 so I and neutral on this, although my trust level with sony has gone down.

 

[Derp]

Sony failed. Shame the creator of the PS1 around a week ago and because of their incompetency no one cares about that but PSN. To go from introducing to ps1 and having the ps2 to "oops your credit cards r belong to haxx0rs" is sad.

You know how stupid that was. I'm betting you're an XBOX fanboy, or something similar. PS3 is a great system, and if the PSN was hacked, it was not Son'y fault. XBOX Live can be hacked too, if someone is up for it. I could say XBOX sucks because it used to have the Red Ring of Death, but I'm not complaining, since they fixed the problem. So is Sony.

 

[Deleted member 4320]

And people said that Playstation was better than Xbox, pfft.

 

[Mr.Paine]

the ps3 is better then xbox i have both. if people put the credit card info on psn their stupid. i rather go out and get a 50 doller psn card.

 

[Hobbies230]

if people put the credit card info on psn their stupid.

Right, because PSN users were supposed to know that its security would be lousy.

 

[Travis]

the ps3 is better then xbox i have both. if people put the credit card info on psn their stupid. i rather go out and get a 50 doller psn card.

No one is stupid for using a credit card, it is much easier and personally why would I go looking for a PSN card when I can just throw on my Credit card and spend EXACTLY the amount instead of overspending everything by $3-4

 

[Mr.Paine]

Here lets put our ssn number credit card info ant names on paper and hand it out to everyone that you see. thats what your basically doing that when you put your credit card information on the internet

 

[Zenrer]

Sony failed. Shame the creator of the PS1 around a week ago and because of their incompetency no one cares about that but PSN. To go from introducing to ps1 and having the ps2 to "oops your credit cards r belong to haxx0rs" is sad.

You know how stupid that was. I'm betting you're an XBOX fanboy, or something similar. PS3 is a great system, and if the PSN was hacked, it was not Son'y fault. XBOX Live can be hacked too, if someone is up for it. I could say XBOX sucks because it used to have the Red Ring of Death, but I'm not complaining, since they fixed the problem. So is Sony.

I could be just as smart by saying PS3 could get the Yellow Light of Death 🙂

 

[Logan18]

😛 ^ agreed.

It's a shame for Sony and all the PlayStation users out there. I'm just glad that I chose an Xbox over the PS3.

 

[Hobbies230]

Here lets put our ssn number credit card info ant names on paper and hand it out to everyone that you see. thats what your basically doing that when you put your credit card information on the internet

You do realize that PSN doesn't ask for your social security number, right?

And, no, that's not at all what you're doing. Not at all. Sony screwed up, but that doesn't mean you should revert to living in the past and avoid all online credit card transactions.

 

[Gimgak]

Sony failed. Shame the creator of the PS1 around a week ago and because of their incompetency no one cares about that but PSN. To go from introducing to ps1 and having the ps2 to "oops your credit cards r belong to haxx0rs" is sad.

You know how stupid that was. I'm betting you're an XBOX fanboy, or something similar. PS3 is a great system, and if the PSN was hacked, it was not Son'y fault. XBOX Live can be hacked too, if someone is up for it. I could say XBOX sucks because it used to have the Red Ring of Death, but I'm not complaining, since they fixed the problem. So is Sony.

Herp derp. I'm not a 360 "fanboy", it's always made me wonder what kind of losers feel the need to defend some shitty corporation that's out there to screw you. Sony failed, it took them way too long to tell anyone their info was stolen. It's not the fact it was stolen, it's the fact they didn't inform everyone right away. Serves them right for suing GeoHot. If Microsoft decided to start suing those hacking the Kinect instead of starting to support them I'd say they should have the same thing happen to them. It didn't though, so karma?

 

[Rich Edmonds]

the ps3 is better then xbox i have both. if people put the credit card info on psn their stupid. i rather go out and get a 50 doller psn card.

How is the PS3 remotely better than the 360? They're both game consoles that pretty much have on-par graphical capabilities, both run a good number of titles while having dedicated IPs. If anything 360 is better due to Microsoft actually giving a damn about their users. I find it funny when PS3 fanboys keep saying that we have to pay per year for our online service, but hey, like I said already, I've seriously enjoyed playing Portal 2 online with my buddies.

 

[Gimgak]

Speaking of Portal 2, just got that for $29 yesterday... thank you amazon daily deals! 😛

If anything the PS3 has better visuals but worse service, something i find funny when the competitor is microsoft.

 

[Smokey]

Speaking of Portal 2, just got that for $29 yesterday... thank you amazon daily deals! 😛

If anything the PS3 has better visuals but worse service, something i find funny when the competitor is microsoft.

Tell me, how exactly is Sony's service worse? they got hacked, it was out of their control, they've beefed up their security and re-created their entire network from the ground up. If it were microsoft who were hacked, you'd be all huffy and puffy about their network being down, and then the same could be said about microsoft. :lol:

 

[Gimgak]

lol PSN has always been free quality, at least where I live. Network outages are common and there's just stupid sheet like the updates that take forever, along with an annoying set up for purchasing downloadable titles. But yeah I would since it's something I pay for sometimes and an inconvenience. I'm not a fanboy who's trying to get in bed with a company lulz

 

[Uphoreka]

PSN will be fixed next week or so. But still, I bet someone will hack it again.

 

[Gimgak]

By now they'll be taking bigger precautions. At least I hope.