Don't Worry, Your PSN Account Details Probably Haven't Been Leaked

We live in a world where a single exposed password can be catastrophic, which means that there’s plenty of reason to panic when a hacking group claims to have gotten hold of account details for over 4,500 users. That’s exactly what happened overnight, when a faction named DerpTrolling claimed to publish dozens of PlayStation Network, Windows Live, and 2K Games logins on Pastebin. Fortunately, it’s starting to sound like a load of old rubbish.

“Looking through the list, there’s certainly an awful lot of crossover with data from previous breaches, in particular the Adobe one,” said Rik Ferguson, vice president of security research at Trend Micro. “The random sample cross-referencing that I have done certainly show that the majority of data listed here has shown up already in previous breaches with a very few exceptions which seem to appear only in this particular paste.”

Those that have gone through the “leaked” data also claim that it’s invalid, though we doubt that anyone’s had the time to verify this for every single entry. Still, there’s probably nothing to worry about – unless DerpTrolling can prove that it has hard evidence of a hack. “Right now, I’m coming down on the side of them having been culled and assembled from previously leaked data,” concluded Ferguson.

Of course, irrespective of the outcome of this particular incident, it’s good practice to change your passwords on a regular basis, as that way you can stay ahead of any potential leaks. Also, it goes without saying that you should never use the exact same keycode twice, as keeping things unique will minimise the risk of your personal information being compromised should anything ever get out. On this occasion, however, it would appear that DerpTrolling is merely living up to its name.