77 Million Accounts Stolen From Playstation Network

Runaway1956 was one of many users to continue to update us about the intrusion we've been following this week. "Sony is warning its millions of PlayStation Network users to watch out for identity-theft scams after hackers breached its security and plundered the user names, passwords, addresses, birth dates, and other information used to register accounts. Sony's stunning admission came six days after the PlayStation Network was taken down following what the company described as an 'external intrusion'. The stolen information may also include payment-card data, purchase history, billing addresses, and security answers used to change passwords, Sony said on Tuesday. The company plans to keep the hacked system offline for the time being, and to restore services gradually. The advisory also applies to users of Sony's related Qriocity network."

Comments

Unencrypted = Stupid

[Bloodwine77]

It amazes me that a company as large and established as Sony would make such a boneheaded move as storing sensitive information in plaintext. Passwords and answers to secret questions should always be hashed. Credit card information and other sensitive information should be encrypted (preferably AES-256 or stronger).

Re:Unencrypted = Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I trust Congress to make laws that will cause secure implementations to be made.

Remember, these are the guys who can't make a tax code that requires companies to actually pay _any_ tax on billions of dollars' of income.

Credit card numbers WERE taken too

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted this in the last thread, but PSN users are already seeing their credit cards being fraudulently used!

So if you're affected, CANCEL YOUR CARD!

It's not a possibility anymore, it's a certainty.

Re:passwords?

[Kuukai]

- If you wanted to play any of the games online, you had to have a PSN account. Which meant you had to provide a credit card whether you were ever going to buy anything or not.

Wrong. This is not true at all. You can play games without ever providing a credit card. On the other hand, they do require your name, birthdate, and mailing address.

Re:Leaving PSN Down

[Bobfrankly1]

I think the fact Sony has left the PSN in a completely disabled state for the past week could hint at some internal problems with not knowing what the hell they're doing in the first place. Their servers have been compromised and can no longer be trusted. In my world, that's a perfect time to re-build your systems from a pristine backup. So why doesn't Sony patch the vulnerability and deploy new servers? Perhaps it's because they don't have a clue what the vulnerability is...

FTFY.
Sony said it has temporarily shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services and hired an outside security firm “to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened,” but refused to offer details on the hack.

Re:passwords?

[Tetsujin]

As a previously happy PS3 user, I'm infuriated at their shoddy handling of this whole thing. The delay in notifying customers was inexcusable, and I still don't understand how passwords could have been compromised... I refuse to believe that even Sony would have stored them in plaintext.

Even if you one-way cipher the passwords, getting access to the password database gives the attacker the ability to attack the database offline via brute-force attacks. (Attempting to brute-force without access to the database system would mean you'd have to do it via the login system - which wouldn't work so well if the login system is built to guard against brute force attacks, for instance by limiting the frequency of login attempts to a single account.) So if somebody gets the password database it's safest to assume they've got the passwords in it.

Re:passwords?

[nschubach]

Cancel? Just call up Visa and they give you a new card and number. No need to kill the account.