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Codebreaker

PlayStation Network: where do we go from here?

John Moe Apr 27, 2011

We talked about the “external intrusion” of the PlayStation Network a few days ago after the network has already been down for a while. At the time, we said if you were on that network, now would be a good time to change a lot of passwords.

Excuse me, I have to reach around and pat myself on the back.

There we go.

Turns out the network was hacked to bits and the bandits made off with members names, address, zip code, country, email, birthday, and PlayStation Network user name and password. Whoops. Sony says there’s no evidence that credit card information was stolen but no one is ruling that out.

On the plus side, Sony does apologize for the inconvenience. So that’s nice.

Here’s the problem with situations like this: users didn’t know how good or bad the security of something like this was. You can’t comparison shop like you can for shoes. It’s in a company’s best interests, and their security’s best interests, to keep it all a secret. So there’s rumors but very little data reaches the actual people using the service.

Not only that, it’s pretty clear to me in the last year of doing this show that the bad guys are innovating faster than the good guys can react.

Sorry.

Happy Wednesday!

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