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Topic: Mobility

UPDATE: PlayStation Network intrusion hackers grabbed customer details

Summary: Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are still offline and there's no ETA as to when services will be restored.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

By for Hardware 2.0 |

[UPDATE: Sony has released a statement which states that the intrusion of the PlayStation Network resulted in information being stolen by hackers. This includes:

  • Name
  • Address (city, state/province, zip or postal code)
  • Country
  • Email address
  • Birthdate
  • PlayStation Network/Qriocity passwords and login, and handle/PSN online ID

It is also possible that the following was leaked:

  • Profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip)
  • PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained

Also worrying is what Sony is saying in regards to financial information held:

'While there is no evidence that credit card data was taken at this time, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, to be on the safe side we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may also have been obtained'

Sony's advice to those worried ... 'emain vigilant to review your account statements and to monitor your credit or similar types of reports.' Hmmm, not very promising.

This is bad. To give you an idea of just how bad, Sony has sent out an email to 75 million users informating them of the breach.

More information here.] 

Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are still offline and there's no ETA as to when services will be restored.

This piece of bad news has been issued to gamers via Sony's PlayStation blog.

I know you are waiting for additional information on when PlayStation Network and Qriocity services will be online. Unfortunately, I don't have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time.

Not only is multiplayer gaming affected, but some Capcom titles purchased from the PlayStation Network store are unplayable, and video streaming by Hulu, Netflix and Vudu are also down.

It does beg the questions what sort of attack the 'external intrusion' was, and what information did the hackers get access to during the attack?

Any readers affected? How are you dealing with the outage?

Topics: Mobility, Hardware, Networking

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34 comments
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  • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

    You are wrong. Vudu and Netflix work. I used them last night. Not sure about Hulu.

    Just Click sign in multiple times and then cancel. Netflix and Vudu will then load.
    tmfair66
    Reply Vote

    • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

      @tmfair66 ... thanks for that ... anyone else managing to get Netflix and Vudu to work?
      Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
      Reply Vote

      • Netflix working here as well

        @Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
        Netflix on the PS3 has worked for me as well, both last night and this past weekend. As tmfair says, it first tries to make you login to PSN, but after a few failed attempts it gives you the "Playstation Network down for maintenance" message, and then the Netflix app starts right up.

        Hulu still isnt working, so we just plug our laptop into our tv and stream it from there. As licensing issues prevent PS3 streaming for some of the shows on Hulu anyways (eg Community), this technique is not new to us.
        chris in DC
        Reply Vote

  • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

    You know what bugs me about this? My Sony Bluray player requires me to authenticate with Sony before using Netflix (stupid I know) and yet it hasn't had a hiccup. Do you think maybe it was only a small part of the network?

    Also, there is a fix for this, just get an XBOX 360!
    slickjim
    Reply Vote

    • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

      @Peter Perry
      So you?re suggesting the fix for the problem is going to cost another $200+? Can the xbox play SOCOM 4? How about inFamous, or many of the other PS 3 exclusives?
      Rick_K
      Reply Vote

  • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

    Its pretty frustrating at the moment. I just recently purchased the PS3 to play DC Universe Online with my 60 year old father who also went out and purchased the equipment and game. (Which has a monthly subscription price of 14.95) Since the network is down you can't access the game content at all. We are not extreme players but we get on together for an hour here or there for some father son time. The worst part of the whole process is that Patrick Seybold ( Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media ) has no idea when it will be fixed. He's in charge and he doesn't know??? They say it was there own doing but if it was wouldn't he have an idea of when they would have it fixed. It would appear that more damage was done to the network then what sony claims. I wouldn't be surprised if the ?external intrusion? destroyed the whole system and they are having to rebuild it from scratch. Sony being a big company would rather not lead on that this happened so they simply say Ya we turned it off. If they were a little more open and gave more info to their customers
    jwjarvis81
    Reply Vote

    • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

      @jwjarvis81 <br>whats frustrating, is that i contributed to a legal defense fund for a guy that cracked the ps3. so what? it just enables debug mode that every game developer can and does use. you can run linix again. austrailian police can use ps3's to decript webrings again. as a byproduct you cannot use burned blurays in the drive. so what. the bad thing is sony manipulated a judge to illegally release my personal financial information. against the law. there are laws in place to prevent that from happening and it was done anyway. by a judge. so now sony can't run their network. i don't feel bad about that.
      Coldestcrow
      Reply Vote

      • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

        @Coldestcrow are you freaking kidding me??? You contributed to the defense fund for a hacker.... What a moron.
        cactusguy70
        Reply Vote

  • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

    So the freakin' passwords were stored in the system in plain text or what? you'd think something like this would have military grade encryption, considering we can do it with free fuckin' open source software these days!
    Viseira
    Reply Vote

    • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

      @Viseira
      There is absolutely no need to store passwords on their system. You simply create a hash from the password and store the hash, which is useless to hackers since you cannot reverse engineer the password from it. I fail to understand why Sony wouldn't use such a basic programming technique?
      Tank252ca
      Reply Vote

      • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

        @Tank252ca Hashed password can be cracked if you have the hashed value. There are products that can attempt a billion possible passwords a second against the most common password hash techniques. So even if Sony stored hashed passwords, they will still be broken, even passwords that are not weak or simplistic.
        manichattan
        Reply Vote

  • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

    Yes, Sony screwed up big time and either didn't keep their network secure enough or had a disgruntled employee. But they did come out and say plainly what was going on. This is the opposite of the debacle back at the start of the last decade, when they denied that by people buying their music CDs and putting them into their computers they were having rootkits installed on their computers.

    If anyone suffers financially from this, Sony will take a very big hit. But at least they're being more open than they were during the 2001 rootkit scandal...
    RepetitionKills
    Reply Vote

    • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

      @RepetitionKills
      Does the name George "Geohot? Hotz ring a bell? I personally think he might be behind this.
      Rick_K
      Reply Vote

      • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

        @Rick_K <br>Your are an idiot. You are probably responsible and just using his name as a smoke screen. You apparently don't know the first thing about the difference between a PS3 and a online network. Sony doesn't store 77 million users data on a PS3 GeoHot hacks PS3s - not corporate networks. Take your medicine and get offline for awhile.
        manichattan
        Reply Vote

  • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

    You freakin' idiot Kingsley. Sony said they are working on sending an email out. They have not "sent out an email to 75 million users informating them of the breach."<br><br>What the hell does "informating" mean anyway? Dumba--.
    JeffVH
    Reply Vote

    • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

      @JeffVH You are a genius jEFfvH. We should all worship you. You are so smart. You demonstrate this with your informative and well reasoned reply to this article. Oh Lord, please make me as smart as jeFFvh.
      My God, jeffVh is smart. Did not he just show how smart he is with his brilliant deductive and expositional powers. Jeffvh - you are intelligent. What is it? Are you retired and bored and angry - or are you a child living in your parent's basement? Mad because your sibling has to share a bedroom, or because your geriatric fishing buddy's volkswagon broke down?
      manichattan
      Reply Vote

  • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

    Encrypt your data, hide the keys ...
    timallard
    Reply Vote

  • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

    I wonder if George "Geohot? Hotz is responsible for this attack? He surely has an Ax to Grind against Sony, and obviously has the skill to hack the system. Given that I wonder what role he has to pay in this. Sure he skipped the Counrty (he?s in Mexico) and is quite upset that Sony has chosen to Sue him over his publishing exploits to damage Sony?s system.
    Rick_K
    Reply Vote

    • You mean George Hotz is the only person in the World who doesn't like Sony?

      @Rick_K
      Personally, I thought Sony had been getting people's backs up for years. Long before the whole "root kit" fiasco, even.
      Zogg
      Reply Vote

    • RE: PlayStation Network still offline, no ETA on service restoration

      @Rick_K Er, Geohot was in court settling with Sony and then in San Francisco giving money to the EFF. Where were you? Under a rock? Maybe it was you Rick_K that hacked Sony.
      manichattan
      Reply Vote
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