Home News HYPETRAIN Serious News Locomotive: Your identity has been stolen

Something which is hard for me to be sarcastic about: Sony’s Playstation Network database has been hacked into, and the personal information stored therein has been stolen. Well, fuck.

PSNAccording to Sony’s official statement on the matter, if you have a PSN account, then guess what the hackers have?

  • Your name
  • Your address (city, state, and zip)
  • Your country
  • Your e-mail address
  • Your birthday
  • Your PSN password and login name
  • Your security question and answer

These might seem like relatively benign data points after you simply change your passwords (which you absolutely should if you use the same one in multiple places), but if a small amount of ingenuity and hacking expertise are applied, then this data is sufficient to get to work on stealing an identity. Better yet: millions of identities.

Even better yet: Sony can’t rule out that credit card information was also stolen…

The most immediate question, of course, is whether the credit information is safe. Sony, in an FAQ which is very much worth reading, says this:

“While all credit card information stored in our systems is encrypted and there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained. Keep in mind, however that your credit card security code (sometimes called a CVC or CSC number) has not been obtained because we never requested it from anyone who has joined the PlayStation Network or Qriocity, and is therefore not stored anywhere in our system.”

Potentially reassuring. However, some PSN users do claim to having had their bank accounts compromised. It would be prudent to keep an eye on your funds, though it would be premature to cancel all your cards this very instant. The FAQ and official statement I linked contain plenty of information on what precautions PSN users can take.

So, what does this mean for Sony? What started as a fluff piece in the local newspaper’s tech section has rocketed into the hacker history books, which will no doubt cause major PR issues for Sony and the Playstation brand in particular. There’s already at least one lawsuit! I’m a PSN customer myself, and while I certainly feel that Sony deserves their share of the blame, I don’t see anyone remembering to call the hackers terrible people. Personally, I’d prefer to see the criminals brought to justice than to see Sony get their pants sued away. Though I’d settle for both.

Well…  good luck!


14 replies to this post
  1. I’m glad I haven’t put my credit card info on my ps3 yet. @@…
    Argh, the network has been down for over a week now.. I miss playing ACB xD

  2. Mhm, makes me feel better I didn’t buy a console. There are also some rumors of some games renting servers to host some other online games off these guys, since hackers appeared there too from what I’ve been hearing. I guess what I want to see is the hackers brought to justice, thrown in jail for some 35 years or so, and people suing Sony for a lot of cash. And then bankrupt it.

  3. I leave false names and addresses on all of my accounts, no matter what I use.

    Hopefully, Sony can verify that the important documents are still safe =P

    Wonder if this is going to affect that new playstation-esque phone…??

    • What important documents? What’s more important than a credit card code? (That is required for a PS account, DUH)

      And I think it’s going to affect the phone, as I suspect they intent(ded) to use the same type of network for phones too. If hackers can hack into one of their networks, they can hack into all of them…

      • Given that the reason PSN is still down is because Sony is rebuilding their network security from the ground up, I feel relatively comfortable guessing that this won’t recur.

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