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Sony Rebuilding PlayStation Network Security After Attack
alphadogg writes "The outage of Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity service, now in its fourth day, looks set to continue after the company said on Sunday that it is 'rebuilding' its system to better guard against attacks. Sony said on Saturday that the outage was caused by an 'external intrusion' into the network, but has yet to detail the problem. The PlayStation Network is used for PlayStation 3 online gaming and sales of software to consoles and the PlayStation Portable. The Qriocity service runs on the same network infrastructure and provides audio and video to Sony consumer electronics products."
Someone insert a Sony music CD into a computer there?
You say to the public that anonymous increased Sony sales.
Is any of this the result of Sony's PSN being a free service? Could something like this happen just as easily on Xbox Live, or would it be more difficult since they charge for the service and are therefore able to put more money into it?
How bad does the security have to initially be for it to be better to take the whole thing down and start over?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
no backups.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Awww poor little fanboy can't play his games?
Sony brought this upon themselves. Go outside and play.
Are you seriously suggesting that Sony deosn't have enough resources to develop a decent service that is critical to their business?
This is almost surely a result of either:
I really doubt it's a money issue.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahhaahahahahaha ha ha!
In your face!
GeoHot is my hero for making you loose it like that and getting to read about it on the internet.
...it's not hackers, unless the hackers are the ones who crashed the Amazon network which Sony uses. So, really. The one we should be getting mad at is Amazon and their bullshit about how cloud computing is flawless. I'm a little surprised Sony didn't do what Netflix did and drop their services across three different Amazon zones.
Were these attacks related to 'anonymous' attacks early this month over sony suing a guy for hacking his ps3?
In Soviet Russia ... customers cripple Sony's hardware!
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why gamers will never be taken seriously. This attitude of "Fuck rights! I want mah GAEMS!" that has been displayed by many gamers during the entire GeoHot Vs Sony episode has me seriously perplexed.
It's GLaDOS I tell you!
For those of you that use your PS3 mainly for streaming Netflix (like me), just keep hitting login after you've gone to the red 'Netflix' screen. It will try to login and fail about 3 to 5 times in a row. Then you will be able to access your Netflix account like normal.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Whose right to what is being protected by this attack?
Sony has a bunch of pretty big games coming out right now. One of the biggest happens to be Portal 2, which when purchased for PS3 gives you a code so that you can register it via Steam on your PS3 and then use Steamworks to then register a free PC copy on your PC via Steam . Portal 2 saves to the cloud, so you can play Portal 2 co-op with people across all platforms (ie, PS3 players can play against a Mac player or PC player). Then you have all the Amazon EC2 stuff going on which some rumors claim is used by Sony for portions of PSN.
I have no idea whether that is true or not, but if I were a large corporation that just settled an issue with a guy making homebrew jailbreaks for my product and a few days later I made a massive alteration to my gaming network service by infusing a whole new service (Steamworks) that has 25,000,000 players on it during one of the biggest game launches of the year (Portal) and that merges PC, Mac, and PS3 users together so they can not only have a copy for one platform and own it for the others, but play with the users on those other platforms in real time and somehow this new thing went a little haywire as new rollouts often do and took down my entire network for five or six days . . . I might just use the opportunity to save face over "we done fucked up" and blame a bunch of anonymous crackers for everything, to buy us time and win some purchase in the hearts of the public who is impacted by this and has some rage to direct wherever they're told it belongs.
The thing is that Sony has very little credibility, so when they say that it's intrusion that caused problems I immediately think that they are being untruthful. Remember the rootkit? They said it didn't exist. Remember Geohot? They claimed that he'd agreed to their terms of service, but couldn't substantiate, despite a huge fishing exercise. Remember RIAA, digital copies destroy music? Sony is part of RIAA; 45 Sony names in their member list.
Once this was a brilliant company. Now I see a company in death convulsions, blaming everyone else for their internal problems.
I'll take claims of hacking with a large tub of salt until they prove it.
is getting what they deserve here.
Bet you'll think twice about pissing off the whole world again, won't you, faggots?
Since when was Geohot or failoverflow responsible for this attack?
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Sony is responsbile for that drama. They can't fix the consoles now that the key is out. They should have just kept quiet and banned the consoles that were not running the official Sony software (or using cheats). This whole thing would have never happened if they just stayed low key. instead they take him to court, confiscate his shit and send C&D's to anyone who posted the key which caused the Anon response.
Sony overreacted.. and they know it.. else they wouldn't have settled out of court.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why gamers will never be taken seriously. This attitude of "Fuck rights! I want mah GAEMS!" that has been displayed by many gamers during the entire GeoHot Vs Sony episode has me seriously perplexed.
I find it really telling that the people who post such things like the tripe quoted here feel that only THEY have rights - the rights of normal gamers is just collateral damage
A parting shot from an ousted president in his last days perhaps.
I work in IT and I would not want to be in the team(s) responsible to fix this mess.
This is truly a disaster, the worst case scenario you dread when responsible for a large network/system.
Usually a 99% uptime is what the company strive for.
Seems like they are in deep trouble if after 4 days it is not back up, I've had to deal with severe outages before (8 hours or so) and the pressure to get things running was enormous. (with 200k users)
It is a MASSIVE failure for whoever is in charge of this system.
Heads will roll.
Their "overreaction" is the same for any company. Why is Sony treated differently? Remember, they are a conglomerate. Their games division is not affiliated with their music/movie division, and their electronics division isn't affiliated either (beyond interoperability between consoles and TVs.) Which is why you can see products one division makes diametrically opposed to other divisions' stated goals. Sometimes they converge (minidisc, at least the consumer edition), but most of the time they're separate.
This sort of thing happens in large companies. To seemingly justify the Anonymous response as "Sony's fault" ignores the other companies doing the exact same things to gamers and users. Selective activism is nothing more than fanboyism taken to its logical absurdity. You can't have a position and attempt to influence others to take it if you don't apply it evenly. (and I am referring to Anonymous and those who think Sony's more evil than Microsoft or Apple.) Hating one company's actions while buying "ooh shiny!" from another company doing the same exact thing is nothing more than old fashioned hypocrisy.
Their settlement out of court had little to do with anything regarding their reaction. We don't know the real reasoning. (And never will, unless we go into Geohot's head or Sony's hive mind.)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
"...company said on Sunday that it is 'rebuilding' its system to better guard against attacks"
We mean it. Really, this one goes to eleven for security.
When did Sony become Microsoft?
You've got to be kidding me. GeoHot and fail0verflow uncovered security flaws, and some pathetic gamer responds that they should be shot in the head. Sony was the one to act like a bunch of Gestapo in response to the security flaws. GeoHot and fail0verflow are not responsible for any attacks on Sony's network.
The parent poster also said nothing about supporting attacks on Sony's network, and Anonymous has disavowed that this is their doing. For all anybody knows, Sony is having trouble of their own making and blaming it on outside parties.
Oh, so the rights of people like geohot should become collateral damage, in deference to the rights of gamers?
Dude, you're simply caught in a crossfire. And, it wasn't the hackers who started the fracas, it was Sony. Wake up and smell the coffee.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"Their "overreaction" is the same for any company."
Intentionally or not, you have posted a falsehood. You need look no further than Bill Gates to prove that. Allow me to quote or misquote him:
"We would rather have them pirating our operating system, than using the competition's operating system!" Microsoft can and will go after business concerns for piracy, but they do not prosecute Random Joe Hacker.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
what does Apple do to jailbreakers? nothing.
what does MS do to non commercial pirates? nothing. (except for the genuine advantage check)
what does Bilzzard/Activation do to WoW cheaters? ban/suspend account and associated credit cards.
what does MS do the XBLA cheaters? ban account/console
Sony is doing what the RIAA/MPAA does (maybe because they members of both?)
software piracy has been around long before music/movie piracy - i can't rememer a single incident where software companies filed john does against everyone they THOUGHT stole something.
they settled because:
1) the PR shitstorm
2) economic impact (they can't undo the damage - their resources are best spend mitigating it - ban the consoles and credit cards
3) weak case - it's not clear (to me) that GeoHot did anything against their TOS. which clause was violated? win or lose the lawsuit the key is still out there. why did the EFF coume out AGAINST Sony? http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message
i say again - by doing what they did, they brought this on themselves.
Even at $99 per year, App Hub is already good PR for Microsoft, compared to Nintendo which flatly rejects all home-based businesses and Sony whose developer relations web site isn't even responding. Likewise, the iPhone Developer Program at $99 per year was good PR compared to what came before it, namely the headaches of BREW.
Well, certainly not GeoHot's right to not be falsely accused for this.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
How about fuck you, people who lump GeoHot, failoverflow with Anonymous, who lump people who want to modify their hardware with people who hack networks and cheat without any proof, who want people arrested and killed for such mundane things as wanting to modify their own console, and OTHERS taking those tools and abusing it.
Fuck you, and assholes like you.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
It's too bad they couldn't have done it proactively while the system was online instead of after the fact.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Good question. Are you asking me for fun or just assuming I implicitly made that accusation since I'm not "rah rah hackers" about it?
I wonder if the system that was compromised contained the credit card data they have stored for the PSN accounts.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why gamers will never be taken seriously. This attitude of "Fuck rights! I want mah GAEMS!" that has been displayed by many gamers during the entire GeoHot Vs Sony episode has me seriously perplexed.
There are 50 million PS3 consoles out there.
8 million MOVE controllers.
70 million PSN accounts. 17 million PlayStation Home social networking accounts.
These numbers, sourced here from the Wikipedia, are credible. No one on these pages has ever posted anything of the sort for home use of the OtherOS.
The PS3 Fat has been out of production for close on to three years.
The OtherOS implied dual-booting into a DIY install of an obscure Linux distribution with a desktop GUI and limited access to system resoures.
This isn't the feature that sold the $600 PS3 FAT to the family who had made their first investment in widescreen, big screen, HDTV.
There have been seven firmware upgrades since 3.21 in April of last year.
Firmware upgrades that have kept the five year old PS3 feature-competitive in high definition console gaming, streaming media services, and Blu-Ray media play.
Why the geek expects the gamer to join him at the barricades now is beyond me.
Gamers aren't really human beings. They are kind of a primate with plant-like features, strongly conditioned, and haven't developed critical abilities or the capacity for historical perspective. While we can't expect anything like moral or social reasoning from them, we can respect their amazing skills and amusing antics, and seek to preserve their numbers as their habitat is threatened by human progress.
Source http://psgroove.com/showthread.php?3088-PSN-Suspended-Being-Completely-Overhauled&p=36277&viewfull=1#post36277
....
""Sony got hacked but what happened was the hacker left them a dirty little surprise that wasn't caught until well after he was force disconnected. Most companies assume that when they shut out the hacker the attack is over and they patch the hole he used to get in. In this case him leaving something behind wasn't caught and by the time its users started reporting being kicked out his dump had started executing and forcing psn networks to stall out. Not only did this hacker steal information but he left something behind that started erasing and duplicating internally on the servers (hence the reports from users claiming that games were acting out right before the service went down entirely). Chances are by the time sony got to it the damage was too great and therefore they had two options 1. Negate all achievements, purchases, etc and deal with the nightmare of it. 2. Export the db tables for each user and rebuild it's network all over again. Keep in mind Sony just hired almost a dozen i.p. specialist and almost just as many security experts after firing a few over the jailbreak psn masking happened. If they can get psn back up in as little as 7 days it'll be a miracle and chances are you will have lost all of your activity for up to 5 days prior to the initial attack".
"
This sounds a bit more plausible then any other theory about PSN's outage including AnonOP's attacking Sony.
Personally I am happy to see Sony get raped like it rapes it's customers.
BTW: all of you PSN junkies going through forced detox, you have a few options. Get online with a Wii or Xbox or
Try this old game called LIFE , it is a hell of a game, comes with a life subscription , completely interactive and has over 6 billion players. No respawn , no cheats unless it is with a partner that isn't your Sig Other. It has no down time unless you end the game. According to myth , the developer hacked it out in 6 days.
I would rate it 6 stars out of 5.
We cannot solve problems with the same thinking that got us there - A Einstein(paraphrased)
Hate to say it, but the AppleTV is looking pretty good right now.
Also the iPad2 which can handle Netflix video just fine and mirror to a TV.
Or of course there is the Roku box solution too.
Tying the ability for Netflix to function to the ability of PSN to function is madness. I liked the PS3 for Netflix playback but there's no way I'm relying on it going forward.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cant, theres too much radiation in japan, due to another silly problem.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Dude, and when we want adult games or other things taken seriously, here are slashdotters saying, majority of gamers are in their mid 20s to 30s, not children.
Make up your mind.
Simple demographic facts are, that there are more people between the age of 18 to 35, than people between 8-18.
18-35ers can afford games.
Childrens parents play games too.
And please mr know it all, cite your facts that gamers are majorly children, this isnt 1982 tron days dude. Go back to your boring ass SQL server job that requires Mr Bean attire.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
So this is making me wonder... Sony claims that some "hacker group" called Anonymous, breached their security, hence the outage. Yet Anonymous, who has both made a claim to attack Sony AND has claimed their past attacks, is not claiming responsibility?
Any chance that someone over at Sony broke something and PR wants to blame it on a "hacker group"?
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
I may dislike MS (cough bugs in MCE) , but I still reserve to right to buy their shiny cheap discount XBOX360, and hack it coz I can and then say, "HAHA".
Oh and their expensive HD addons to their xbox, at least now we can make our own..
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Sony is such a wonderful company, I'm sure they will be happy to give me a partial refund for not being able to use the GT5 online features this month. They were so nice when they told me they would automatically remove the other OS software for me, I didn't have to do a thing. Just agree to let them do it. If I didn't agree, I was no longer able to use the PS3 for any network games as promised, but I give them that one- they knew it was for my own good. They were also really looking out for me and even put software on music CD's and DVD's (the last place you would expect to find executable code) and it would install all by itself and I didn't even have to worry about all the windows setup junk. To top it off, they even scanned my hard drive to let me know if anyone had put shared music on it! all for free! they never charged me a thing for doing any of this! What a nice company. Obama even went and had his recent fund raiser at Sony. They must be great! No politician would ever be dirty!
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
The identity of the hackers are secrets. The zero day exploits of the hackers is secret. The tactics of the hackers are varied and in many cases also secret. But When you work as an employee for a company everything is transparent to the adversary.
The adversary knows what kind of firewall you use, what OS you use, what software you use, who you hired to protect the network, what their capabilities are or aren't, but they also know as a corporation you are limited to the profit motive.
So shutting down the network isn't the worst. The worst is creating as much or as great a loss in money as possible. Deleting information isn't as bad as copying intellectual property, source code, or something like this.
And like I said before it's probably Sony blaming it on Anonymous, that doesn't mean it actually is Anonymous.
Purely mathematically speaking, the rights of millions of gamers to enjoy their entertainment compared to the rights of the dozen or so dudes who are dying to enable piracy and basically destroy the entertainment ecosystem... no real contest to me. You'd have to be a retard to take the piracy side.
And I know, I know.. geoshitz doesn't approve of piracy. Certainly not. He only works hard to enable it because it's his right.
It would be very easy to allow the rights of gamers and the "hackers". Sony doesnt want that. Sony is who you should be mad at.
I use the term hackers as in its original meaning of someone who tinkers with or "hacks" together something to learn from it..
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
However, if your primary objective is control, rather than failure tolerance, reducing the number of things that your device is good for when severed from the mothership is entirely sensible
The problem with that thought is, there are two motherships.
Every other device on the planet (that I know of), talks to the Netflix mothership.
Only the PS3 software (that I'm aware of), introduces another player in that chain. The PS3 Netflix app responds to not one, but two motherships - Netflix and the PSN.
That's the problem. What you say about control makes sense but every other player already does that, without an issue. Only when you start having too many motherships, do you have an issue. Even from a pure control perspective the PS3 netflix player is not "doing it right".
Hopefully it's just badly written on the part of Netflix and they can re-work it to be more fault tolerant of PSN going down - it seems like that would be possible since it kind of works already for some people.
But until it's clear those strings are cut I cannot trust it as a primary Netflix player and will move away from it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
i say again - by doing what they did, they brought this on themselves.
Just like my girlfriend. I didn't want to hit her, but she totally made me.
Never forgets.
Never forgives.
I feel a enormeous curiosity about what the problem is. Is something mundane?, like a cascade error, or really a intrusion?. I feel I would love to read a novel or a article about the issue here :D
Sony has ben fighting the esence of hacking on latelly. The problem with GeoHot and the hackers is political. The hackers think that can open the hardware that own, and toy with it, and spread any information that learn from the machine. Sony want to use the system to stop these people from doing so, and seems very efficient in bending the rules of the system to do absolutelly evil things, like reveal the private information to everyone that has mantained relations with GeoHot accounts. Even if the current downtime has nothing to do with hacking, theres a lot of bad karma around. What goes around comes around.
I think that if you learn why the ENTER key of your keyboard is broken, you can tell others. Sony is just tryiing to fight common sense here. If where a car, no one would even take then seriusly, but computers are black box for a lot of people.
-Woof woof woof!
Nobody expects the gamers to back in this, and that is the problem. The problem is Sony is setting a dangerous precedent. Today remove other OS, because few use it and few care about it it is safe to remove with minimal complaints, establish the precedent in court that basically allows them to remove features included with a system at the time of sale from the small handful of complainers, now they can remove previous console compatibility or anything they deem not worth the money at any time. Sony wants a rule where the rules can be changed at any point in time by them for any reason. If they can do that why can't they say, 3 years down the line establish a kill switch saying OK you need to upgrade now, or OK this game is out of date now, you must buy the remake... etc...
Too true, something about emperors and clothes comes to mind...
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
So that is IBM/HP/Red Hat exactly? I know how I find security of mind. It is when my accountant chokes on the bill and gasps while clutching his heart, "there isn't enough money in the world to pay this hourly rate". Then I know I went right and got an IBM guy in to do the job.
Seriously, how do you expect me to sleep well at night with some MSCE guy charging minimum wage? Dammit, your bill got to bleed the company dry. That is a sign of quality.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Jailbreaking is distinctly different from circumventing a copy / rights protection mechanism. But of course Apple DID object to it and cited the DMCA amongst other laws. They failed because their case wasn't strong enough.
what does MS do to non commercial pirates? nothing. (except for the genuine advantage check)
People have extrapolated that because MS privately prefers pirates to be using their desktop OS than a rival's somehow it applies to consoles or other matters. It doesn't. Indeed they took down cryptome.org using the DMCA. Used it as the basis to bring criminal charges against modchip importers. And even used it to shut down a popular "homebrew" modding site JTAG hacks. In other words MS has been as active in stamping on modders / homebrew as Sony ever was.
And of course Nintendo is as active at prosecuting hackers / cart importers.
People seem to think that Sony is acting out of turn here when it isn't. It's actions are precisely in keeping with other console manufacturers, stamping on the hackers / importers and banning end users who mod. Colour me surprised. If you buy a closed system where copy protection / DRM is implicit to the model you can expect the full weight of the platform holder to come down on anyone who threatens that model. And in most jurisdictions they'll have the law on their side.
Sony you can't stop the hacking anymore. When you had the same problem awhile ago! And now you claim your rebuilding your Infrastucture?
The outage of Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity service, now in its day 5, looks set to continue after the company said on Sunday that it is 'rebuilding' its system to better guard against attacks. Sony said on Saturday that the outage was caused by an 'external intrusion' into the network, but has yet to detail the problem. The PlayStation Network is used for PlayStation 3 online gaming and sales of software to consoles and the PlayStation Portable. The Qriocity service runs on the same network infrastructure and provides audio and video to Sony consumer electronics products." Yeah crappy products if you ask me! And an outdated Infrastucture! SCEA needs to starting changing by charging to play online! This would definitely ease the Dentions on the online play when players are playing the shoot em up games Call of Duty Especially COD and any online play game! Sony there is no hacking & cheating on XBL not that I have seen any as of yet Thank you Microsoft!
Why the geek expects the gamer to join him at the barricades now is beyond me.
Well, to me this isn't about "Fuck Games, I want mah Linux!", this is about the legal right to do as you please with your own property, and this is something that I would think is in everybody's interest. But instead we've seen gamers ride to the defense of Sony, forfeiting their rights as consumers, in favor of getting their latest game-fix. Most arguments I've seen are along the lines of "Piracy is bad!" (Don't get me wrong, Piracy is bad, but the lengths some people go to decry it are astounding), or "Well, now PSN will be full of Hackers. And to me, those arguments pale in comparison to what Sony is trying to establish as some sort of "standard practice", and why that is bad. And I guess that on some level, I expected some overlap between the Gamer and the Geek, but I guess I was wrong.
I actually find it hard to believe that this is an intrusion. I think that they were working on the upgrade to the new "PSN": http://kotaku.com/#!5785451/yes-your-playstation-network-account-is-changing-hands-sort-of. They screwed something up, lost their database, and didn't have proper backups. They are probably trying to rebuild the database and in the meantime use a convenient scapegoat to blame the outage on so they don't look quite as bad. In fact, all of the recent problems have been since this announced change of account management for PSN.
I'm not usually a fan of the slippery slope argument, but I can see you working. Even without going to "What could Sony do next?" The original argument is still quite valid. When the PS3 was first released, there were some users who went and purchased one (over a competitor) because they liked the OtherOS option. It was an advertised capability.
I'm fine with the PS3 Slim not shipping with that capability, nobody who bought one was granted that feature. That's the price of the shiny new box.
But, for the hundreds, or handful, or even *one* buyer out there who wanted that OtherOS feature (and paid for the hardware to make it happen), it was just plain wrong of Sony to require that user to keep that one feature (and forgo all other PS3 features like gaming and streaming) or the feature that the buyer used as the difference between the PS3 and whatever else. That was the point of the lawsuit that is also fought on the gamer's behalf by the geek.
Oh wait, Ohh no, not Hiren's Boot CD! my god they are destroying all our firmware and this time they installing BSD! Fuck we cannot hack BSD with our own firmware. Who gave them that idea? whats more they are now changing hosts files and a running a Syn attack script each time we try to do an update!!!!
*Head Explodes*
You can thank team REBUG and their POS CFW for that.
I agree we wouldn't have this problem if Sony had just killed GeoHot:
1. Sony kills GeoHot.
2. Investigators trace the murder back to Sony.
3. The media report about the murder.
4. The public equates Sony with organized crime.
5. Sony proper makes a public effort of distancing themselves from SCEA, possibly even disbanding the entire division (and probably firing a lot of employees in the process).
6. The bad PR piles up and Sony is marginalized on the American market as nobody wants to deal with them.
Final result: American gamers can count themselves lucky if their PSN even stays up as the American market becomes massively unprofitable for Sony. Then again, many of them wouldn't even want their PS3s anymore because having one means you funded a company that thinks nothing of ordering hits on people they deem dangerous to their bottom line. Cue tons of cheap PS3 offers on eBay.
But yeah, whatever caused this disruption of service wouldn't hit too many gamers. Problem mostly solved.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Sony brought down the PSN. They said they did. They did it so they could audit access because a remote intrusion was detected. The remote intrusion did not cause the outage, Sony did.
PS3 went in the trash on Saturday. It was the only hold big media still had on me so I'm glad to see it go.
I just needed a little help kicking the habit. I cancelled my cable about 4 years ago and this was the last hold-out of mind-numbing corporate entertainment.
I'm finally free! Thanks anonymous!
...that's what I'm doing with my home entertainment setup, now that my PS3 doesn't work anymore.
Seriously, Sony...just give it up. Open up your system and get to work on the PS4.
Devil's advocate stance here:
Sony's position did send a message though -- it means that the origin of future PS3 cracks and other items will have be kept secret so the Sony legal brigade doesn't make an example out of someone else.
Why is this a major victory for Sony? Simple. There is no way to tell exactly where a supposed crack came from. This means that it will be extremely difficult to tell a "good" patch to allow homebrew modding from malicious code that permanently bricks a device.
Long term, it means that patches for Sony devices will be gambles for people who are trying them out. How will one know it will be something that actually works, versus something that will trash the device? There is absolutely no way to tell.
It is like the PC cracking scene now. How do you tell a bona-fide scene release versus a Trojanized release that will install a botnet client and rootkit? You can't. With the Apple jailbreaking scene, the iPhone Dev Team is identifiable and has a sterling reputation. This cannot exist in the Sony ecosystem.
...probably did it because "Sony" has become synonymous with "douche bag"
...is the fact that I can't transfer a game I had bought right before the shutdown to my PSP, because I'm not signed into the account that bought it.
I really wish they would at least put out a dummy sign in of some sort so I could have some control over the content I paid for |:
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Do not assume that rights belong to such entities as a majority. Because you'll be incredibly sorry when you turn out to be in the minority. Individuals have rights, be them the lone nut or everyone else. Besides, the only thing making this a 'rights' issue is that those rights are being centrally managed by a purely evil entity (Sony). They've taken rights away and they haven't properly evaluated the ramifications of consequences... Or they did and don't give a damn about you and everyone else suffering those consequences.
Same thing happens with real, basic human rights every day but you're probably too busy playing games to care.
Mind the frickin' laser...
...Besides, the only thing making this a 'rights' issue is that those rights are being centrally managed by a purely evil entity (Sony)....
When you start attributing qualities like "evil" and "good" to abstract entities like a huge multitude of individuals just in order to try and make points AGAINST such entities as you might be biased against, is when you lose credibility.
The US Govt is responsible for a lot of evils (as are most Govts around the world), but not in its entirety. In much the same way, SOME of Sony's divisions have acted irresponsibly or in a crass manner, without consideration for other people, much like Anonymous with their DDOS attacks and revealing of Sony employees' name and family info (unpardonable) and whoever is responsible for this "external intrusion". Does not mean they as a unit are "evil".
Usually I find the primary group of people who call Sony "evil" in regards to their gaming platform have an overwhelming affection for the Microsoft platform.
O_o uhhhhh, yeah.
I don't know if this is the elephant in the room or not, but I find it VERY odd that Sony is so quiet about this. Also, no media seems to be picking up on what to me, is the elephant in the room. The outage occurred just after the launch of Portal 2 on the PS3...clearly GLaDOS has something to do with this.
Seriously though, Portal 2 launch = PS3 steamworks integration.
Could this just be some poorly developed integration that left a gaping hole open to hackers?
This is the most disgusting argument I ever heard. We all have the RIGHT to use the legal system. People SHOULD use the courts when they have a legal conflict with someone. That is where these conflicts should be resolved. People SHOULD NOT lie down and take crap from someone because they fear retaliation. People SHOULD NOT resolve conflicts using Denial Of Service attacks. People SHOULD NOT resolve conflicts by uploading viruses onto their opponents servers. Good for Sony for being classy and settling their differences in court.
They are partially responsible since they discovered flaws in Sony's security and didn't report it to Sony before publishing the flaw. If they had given Sony a few weeks before publishing Sony could of fixed those issues. But they didn't want the security fixed. They made a decision. They chose to compromise the security of 70 million PSN accounts. They chose their own interests over the interests of the other people using the device.
Sure, who cares about pirates? But what about the people who paid for a feature that was subsequently removed? That should be about as illegal as it gets, yet it's what Sony did. And it's Sony's crippling of their own product that caused people to try to re-enable it again. If that enabled piracy, then that's on Sony's head.
When you start attributing qualities like "evil" and "good" to abstract entities like a huge multitude of individuals just in order to try and make points AGAINST such entities as you might be biased against, is when you lose credibility.
Oh, come on. There's nothing biased or incredible about calling Sony evil. They do not have any lofty goals whatsoever. They care only about two things: money and power (control). And they've proven several times that they have very little in the way of scruples in how they get that money and power. I think you can safely call that evil.
Are they more evil than a company like Monsanto that willfully deals with corrupt civil servants in Africa in order to restrict the freedom of African farmers? Probably not. But due to their singular drive for money, combined with the anonymity of the decision makers, most large corporations do behave evilly quite often. Not all, mind you. Google, for example, often tries to do really honestly good, but even they, despite their "don't be evil" motto, do find themselves occasionally doing evil. Apparently it's hard for an abstract multitude of people to not be evil.
Usually I find the primary group of people who call Sony "evil" in regards to their gaming platform have an overwhelming affection for the Microsoft platform.
In my experience, people who call Sony evil, also call Microsoft evil. The discussion is mostly about which is the most evil. (Probably Oracle.)
Oh, come on. There's nothing biased or incredible about calling Sony evil. They do not have any lofty goals whatsoever. They care only about two things: money and power (control). And they've proven several times that they have very little in the way of scruples in how they get that money and power. I think you can safely call that evil.
Are they more evil than a company like Monsanto that willfully deals with corrupt civil servants in Africa in order to restrict the freedom of African farmers? Probably not. But due to their singular drive for money, combined with the anonymity of the decision makers, most large corporations do behave evilly quite often. Not all, mind you. Google, for example, often tries to do really honestly good, but even they, despite their "don't be evil" motto, do find themselves occasionally doing evil. Apparently it's hard for an abstract multitude of people to not be evil.
As far as goals are concerned, I think you just described every for-profit corp in existence. However, time after time, when only one tech corp is picked out in a specific group, while evangelizing other similar companies, then something's not ...kosher.
In my experience, people who call Sony evil, also call Microsoft evil. The discussion is mostly about which is the most evil. (Probably Oracle.)
Not my experience here - on /. most of the folks seem to be condemning Sony while evangelizing Microsoft. Such hypocrisy (at least in Sony-PS3 related threads), in my estimate, could only be because they happen to prefer that platform and so have associated all negativity with the "other" platform. Something about "confirmation bias" and all that.
And if you are really looking for evil, may I suggest Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grumman, big Pharma and big Oil?
Evangelizing Microsoft? On what alternate slashdot have you been hanging out? During Slashdot's existence, Microsoft has received far more hate than all other companies put together. If it's receiving less hate now than in previous years, that's because Microsoft isn't doing quite as dirty deals as it used to, and occasionally seems to be bettering itself. At least in comparison to where companies like Oracle, Sony and Apple are heading.
I agree with you that the military-industrial complex, big pharma and big oil are generally more evil than most computer-related companies, but they're generally more hidden, and things in those industries don't change anywhere near as fast as in software. And the weird stuff that software major companies do, does tend to have a very real effect on the lives of programmers.
In any case, not every for-profit corp really does evil. Google is a big name that's struggling against it, and there are many smaller companies that do the same. But it is true that our economic system practically forces them to be evil. Making less profit seems to be punished a lot worse than doing massive damage to society. Maybe we should fix that.
Sony was the one to act like a bunch of Gestapo in response to the security flaws.
Because suing GeoHot was just like rounding up and gassing the Jews.
Right.
I call Godwin's Law. 3rd down and 15 yard penalty.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
people have the RIGHT to do what they want with hardware they BOUGHT..
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message
Simply put, Sony claims that it's illegal for users to access their own computers in a way that Sony doesn't like. Moreover, because the CFAA has criminal as well as civil penalties, Sony is actually saying that it's a crime for users to access their own computers in a way that Sony doesn't like.
That means Sony is sending another dangerous message: that it has rights in the computer it sells you even after you buy it, and therefore can decide whether your tinkering with that computer is legal or not. We disagree. Once you buy a computer, it's yours. It shouldn't be a crime for you to access your own computer, regardless of whether Sony or any other company likes what you're doing. ....
Sony's core arguments — that it can silence speech that reveals security flaws using the DMCA and that the mere fact of a terms of use somewhere gives a company permanent and total control over what you do with a device under pain of criminal punishment — are both sweeping and frightening, and not just for gamers and computer researchers. Frankly, it's not what we expect from any company that cares about its customers, and we bet it's not what those customers expect, either.
YOU STAND BY THIS?
Nope.
He hacked (read "tinkered with") the hardware bought and owned outright. If there is a way of modifying a piece of hardware such that it allows unauthorized access to an external network (the playstation store, etc.), then that network is faulty. Do you suppose I can hack my PC to access MSN without authority?
Beyond that point, though, there is another: He never accessed PSN, and thus the store - at least according to his court submissions. He couldn't use "having not agreed to any license terms" as a defense otherwise. So he couldn't have known PSN and services were so retarded.
The rumor is that Sony probably discovered that there was a fatal flaw in the design of the Playstation Store and Qriosity and had to start from scratch with major components. That's not the fault of GeoHot.
The gamer-geeks are responding as geeks. Wonder why!
Evangelizing Microsoft? On what alternate slashdot have you been hanging out?
That would be THIS /. - on EVERY single Sony PS3 related thread. Just READ the comments.
I don't restrict myself to reading only PS3 threads. On almost every single Microsoft-related thread, Microsoft gets its fair share of criticism (which is quite a lot). I suspect your view is somewhat biased.
Well at least they are going to rebuild PSN security. Like that is going to change anything! Hackers are always going to be one step ahead unless you find a better one to work for you.
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They did more than just sue him. They went after all his personal devices, they censored him from speaking about the jailbreak, and they went after the information of all the people that viewed or commented on his site, his Google blog, his YouTube videos, or Twitter.
The Gestapo wasn't all about gas chambers. It was also about excessive police tactics. All this because somebody exposed a security flaw, something that is done all the time with operating systems, browsers, and other applications.