Talking Point: The Impact of the PlayStation Network Disaster

Doesn't shake my faith at all. I've already been a victim of card fraud previously - twice. This wasn't the first time a network's been hacked and details stolen, and it sure as hell won't be the last. It's not even the worst occurrence.

This could, and often does, happen to any network which allows public access. Play have had it, ShopTo have had it, banks have had it, the military have had it, and the FBI have had it - and that's just a few.

Today, there are even reports that Xbox Live - the "paid, secure" network which everyone and his dog seems to be claiming they'll be moving to - is having issues with in-game phishing messages. While that may not be on the scale of the PSN issue, it at least indicates that no network is immune to such problems, whether it's funded or free.

My faith in the network isn't shaken at all either. I think the worst case scenario here is that only PSN Cards and prepaid cards be used to purchase content, but I highly doubt that will happen either.

I do find it highly annoying that Sony is being put out to be the bad guy here, when they are in fact the victims (as well as the consumers of course). They obviously have faults in their system that have got to be corrected, but I don't see how they are to blame. The guys that hacked the system are to blame!

After reading the leaked chat logs of some of the hackers, I was amazed at how brilliant these guys are. Why are they wasting their talent on something that can have them put in jail for years? I just don't get it!

Finally, I see some people with some sense, the underlying problem (the console war) is what has blown customer reponses so out of proportion. I agree with both of you, Sony is the victim. I am not thrilled that my personal info may have been compromised, but it happens in this day and age. I wonder how this sitation would have played out if the hackers had targeted Microsoft and XBL instead? Sony is simply a victim...

Here's where I disagree to an extent.

Yes, Sony is a victim. They were seemingly attacked by an outside entity. And sure, no public network like this is 100% safe. However, from what I've been reading, it does seem that the PSN was left by Sony to be particularly vulnerable and to have had poor security.

I believe the length of time this has taken is a pretty good indication that Sony really doesn't know what was going on. I think it's fair to say a better network would have detected the intrusion sooner and had things compartmentalized enough that one wouldn't have to shut down every facet of the network for a week or more to deal with the intrusion. Moreover; our data, I feel, should have been encoded, but it seems like it was left as basic, plain text.

Consumers do have a right to expect that if a firm asks for our information and volunteers to keep it, it will keep it safe, at the minimum, encoding it so that even if it's retrieved, the thieves have no idea what they're looking at.

From reports I've read, this was part of the problem with the recent console PS3 hacks, the root key was there in plain sight, so to speak, not encoded.

I suspect some heads will roll. And frankly, sadly, they should. Only now is Sony perhaps building a stronger network. Let's just hope they finally get it right. Hack me once, shame on you; hack me twice, shame on me.

@din_djinn.... You are correct and I do agree with you. If what all I've read is correct there seems to be a lot of plaintext that should have been encrypted. Also, from what I've read is that these hackers didn't just walk into the system and it's taken years of getting deeper one step at a time, and the reason for the outage is that PSN is having to be rebuilt from the ground up. It's being made out to be that Sony had gaping holes in their security, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all. If it was that easy PSN would likely be all patched up and back online now I'm sure!

I did feel a bit miffed to only hear about the "real deal" concerning the shutdown so long after the intrusion, but I assume it took a while to figure out what the hell happened. It's probably pretty darn hard to reverse engineer an attack like this, and I'm sure they didn't want to send over 70 million users into a panic if they didn't have to. Sadly though, that turned out to be the case.

A lot of this info can be found by using the white pages anyway. Hell before the internet I just looked people up in the phone book. And I bet a lot of the same people complaining about Sony letting others view their adress and name are the same idiots that tweet their phone numbers or post their life to facebook.

Still, having my passwords and possibly my credit info floating around the interweb just makes me feel a bit creeped...I canceled the card linked to my account with the quickness.

Take my password? You're cool. :/
Mess up my trophies? Sh*t gets real!

Good news, new info posted here: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/04/27/qa-1-for-playstation-network-and-qriocity-services/

Confirms that CC data was encrypted, but personal info was not.

This is a huge headache for both Sony and it's customers, though, and a major PR embarrassment.

Let's hope things work out for the better in the end.

@din_djinn... Thanks for the link!

It's unfortunate because SOCOM 4, Portal 2, AND Mortal Kombat came out last week, all big online games. At least I got MK, which has good single player modes

Nintendo loyalist for years, I got my first PS3 for Christmas. So far, I have three games for the PS3, LBP GOTY, 3D Dot Heroes, and LBP2. I've also sunk about $25 into the PSN store, mostly on DLC for Little Big Planet. Little Big Planet 2 I have not had the opportunity to go online with, as my fiance bought it for me for Easter. 3D Dot Heroes, while awesome, does not have online. Exploring all the wonderful fan-created levels in Little Big Planet, the content packs, creating your own levels and uploading to the internet, is a great diversion and adds a ton of replay value to the game. But for those people who enjoy games that involve head-to-head combat, sudden total loss of online could be a real deal-breaker.

I have researched the incident online, which led me to reports that the encryption keys for the PS3 were finally cracked and subsequently posted online just this past January. This finally allowed hackers to gain access to the nuts and bolts and start really tinkering around with the system. As well, I don't think an attack of this magnitude would have ever been possible without the the details of the crack publicly released earlier this year.

i heard they may be finally done fixing it around may 3. i hope it's before because that's when the black ops dlc comes out. they should give out $20 give card to everyone for screwing up so bad because i'm hearing that people are starting to get charged over a $1000 dollars because their information was stolen.