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Sony faces a long road after its Playstation Network breach
JAPANESE CONGLOMERATE Sony, one of the world's biggest and best known electronics, gaming, and entertainment brands, has been brought to its knees by one of the largest private data breaches to date, but for the company the pain has only just begun.
For Sony, the Playstation Network (PSN) and its Qriocity services are much more than an online games, matchmaking service and digital storefront, it's a network that has a worldwide reach of tens of millions and showcases the brand to a wide range of age groups and demographics. For such services to be offline for days is at best embarrassing, but having to admit that it failed to adequately protect its customers' data is likely to leave lasting damage to Sony's reputation.
Sony's decision to bundle a rootkit on its CDs back in 2005 was bad enough, and the firm's decision to use heavy-handed tactics to stop hacker George Hotz from disseminating information about how to jailbreak the Playstation 3 games console raised the ire of the online hactivist group Anonymous. Even with Sony involving the courts to stop Hotz from spreading word of his jailbreak and Anonymous getting involved, the PSN security breach hit the public's consciousness when it was down for days and ultimately with Sony's admission that millions of customers' personal data had been stolen.
The fact that Sony couldn't even pinpoint what data had been stolen, specifically credit card data, only fanned the flames of fury among users and left the wider public with a perception that Sony was simply asleep at the wheel when it came to securing customers' precious data.
Sony might already have had a tarnished reputation among the technology savvy following the Sony BMG rootkit scandal, however the PSN data breach is on a different scale. It's not just the number of people affected but the fact that it made front page news on mainstream newspapers and the nightly television news has meant that Sony has been beaten, humiliated and, like a punch drunk fighter, left lurching from side to side wondering how to repair its tattered reputation.
While Anonymous admitted that it was behind the first wave of attacks on the Playstation Network, it has distanced itself from having a hand in the second, prolonged outage. Although the hacktivist group said that individual members might have acted independently it is unlikely the group was behind this attack.
Ever the people's champion, Anonymous, backed off after gamers lashed out at the group for taking down the PSN, so it is highly unlikely Anonymous would have decided to go in for a second shot at taking down Sony's PSN, and Hotz also denied involvement in the data breach. At this point there is no concrete information about who was behind the attack. F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hypponen admitted that it does not know who hacked Sony's network, and while Sony has said it is working with a private security firm and law enforcement to investigate the intrusion, it has released no further information.
Whether or not Anonymous carried out the attack is beside the point, however. What's known at the moment is that Sony failed to protect its customers' private data from unauthorised third parties and for that it simply has no excuse. Sony was publicly warned by Anonymous days before it attacked the PSN, so Sony should have hardened its network security defences and procedures, but it apparently did not do so.
Tags: Software
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What the hell?
Ok so let me get this straight Sony pissed you off over charging for additional stuff that is just stupid but then the Anonymous people "hack" the playstation network so that people like myself can't even go online to play the games that I like. So that just makes you as bad as "Sony" I don't care about half the stuff you guys are talking about I accepted all that I was required by law to be charged for it is just redundant to act like children and throw a temper tantrum all I want is to be able to play for an hour or two and then go about my day GROW UP I'm 34 and I do work for a living and the ps3 was just a luxury to me my husband and I even watch Netflix together and I do pay my bill and my games if it's too expensive to buy the games then buy used I do
Its all Linux based. No Microsoft in PSN, thats why they were hacked so easily.
Anmd for the clueless below, just look up the facts, Microsoft current server OS has ten times less vulnerabilities than any enterprise Linux distribution.
Which is why Linix on the Internet gets hacked to shreds. See http://www.zone-h.org/news/id/4737 for instance
Sony's services do NOT use Linux. They are Windows server based and have been forever.
The amount of data stolen is incredible. This is going to hurt Sony so much that it will teeter on total failure. Some of those SOE systems have been going for over 12 years. EQ itself is over 12 years old, and anyone having had an account there during that time is at risk.
What pissed me off the most was that Sony is willing to HELP YOU ENROLL (which I assume is at your cost) in an identity theft program. This is probably the second most outrageous thing to come out of the whole hack. It is their failure to protect our private information entrusted to them and they decided they'll help us enroll. They need to do it all and pay for the whole thing.
Let's just say that Sonys in for a hell of a time getting out of this one.
"THE BLU RAY SLOT LOADING DRIVE IS SO TIGHT."
Come on and admit it--you know you don't even touch the sides.
The sheep are already clamoring for more abuse, sony will get record sales now because this idiocy puts their PS3 in the news and sales will double.
People are retards, Don't believe it? Ask Nato or the BBC how moronic they are and how easily fooled with the most insanely idiotic rhetoric and fake news..
SONY IS AWESOME YOU FOOLISH N00BS!!! I AM GAY FOR MY PS3, THE BLU RAY SLOT LOADING DRIVE IS SO TIGHT.
TO SAY SONY HAS NO EXCUSE FOR GETTING HACKED AND HAVING ITS CUSTOMER'S PERSONAL DATA STOLEN IS LIKE SAYING ITS THE BANK'S FAULT FOR GETTING ROBBED AND HAVING ITS CUSTOMER'S PERSONAL LOCKBOXES STOLEN.
YES THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN, AND SOON WILL BE, BETTER PREPARED FOR BEING ROBBED BY NEW SOPHISTICATED CRIMINALS.
IN THE MEANTIME, BLAMING THE VICTIM (SONY) DOESN'T REALLY ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING.
I'm curious if the people writing these analysis' really know how the public is gonna react to this in the long run. Sure everyone is going nuts over it right now cause it's news that gets attention but at the same time Sony is hardly the first major organization to get hacked. To date the list that I know of which had similar data leakage if not more sensitive data leaked includes the FBI, the Ministry of Defense, MCI Worldcom, Sprint, AT&T, Equifax, Citibank, World of Warcraft along with several other MMO's, Xbox live, Ebay, Amazon.com, several major universities and the list goes on. It's worth noting that none of these services or organizations suffered long lasting effects as a result of these hacks cause as soon as the news moves onto some new scandal/story the general public tends to forget all about it.
To TDR:
There data intrusion had very little to do with running Linux on the servers. The PS3 (Linux) hack "ReBug" only allowed access to the developer tools on the retail PS3 Units, it was the design/verification of the Playstation Network to allow developer systems almost unlimited access that was the problem (http://www.platformnation.com/2011/04/25/details-emerge-about-playstation-network-hack/). Sony's decision to sue the the author of the Rebug hack was like rolling out a big red carpet and saying "hey guys' why not come through this back-door where the is NO security." What is most concerning is that the hacked PS3 units were simply mimicking dev-units and apparently dev-units have had access to the information all along... A system/network is only as secure as the time and effort that has gone into designing and implementing it, and in this case Sony dropped the ball on this one, but if you don't think Linux is secure, then please let the NSA know (http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/)... Otherwise, please spread the fud elsewhere...
TDR:
You sir seem to be mentally or ethically-challenged...Windows server secure? Just a few examples below to prove your Swiss Cheese story is full of holes, all of which exist in Microsoft server products.
Oh, and while we are on the subject of security, what software company's products run 98% of the botnets in the world? Why not ask your employer Microsoft to pay for some Linux training for you so you can make educated comments about the OS that runs the web?
http://ai-soft.com/software-firm-says-e-mails-stolen-in-server-breach/
http://www.secpoint.com/University-Server-Breach-not-by-IIS-Vulnerability.html
http://spamnews.com/The-News/Latest/Microsoft-Warns---Zero-day-Vulnerability-in-SharePoint-Server-2010051213048/
and so on...
Oh yes (almost forgot what the article was about due to your Microsoft advertisement)...Sony sucks as well...they are their own worst enemy,now having their own brand of "meltdown". Shintaro Ishihara was right about a few things.
Thats what comes of Sony running their server systems on Linux. The Swiss Cheese of OSs is no challenge to hackers.
No doubt they are taking this long to reinstall it all on Windows Server so that it can be made secure....
Probably they should ask for some assistance from the Xbox Live team!
It may be coincidental, but the bandwidth of my local isolated town seemed to go up when PSN went down...
go figure.