Monday, May 2, 2011

And just when Sony thought the worst was over...

Charts explaining the intrusion handed out at the Sony conference yesterday.
With the PSN down and seemingly on a strong path to recovery, and Obama finally receiving a solid tip from an anonymous Sony hacker on Osama's actual location taken from the data leak, the last thing you would expect to make an abrupt interruption to the celebration is ANOTHER ~25 million accounts' data/thousands of credit cards/bank credentials compromised. But that's what happened. As Sony was announcing that they will be merging all the DC Universe servers into four convenient "super servers", they were also uncovering that hackers also reaped another few million accounts from SOE resulting in Sony also shutting down its PC services as well.

Our ongoing investigation of illegal intrusions into Sony Online Entertainment systems has discovered that hackers may have obtained personal customer information from SOE systems.  We are today advising you that the personal information you provided us in connection with your SOE account may have been stolen in a cyber-attack.   Stolen information includes, to the extent you provided it to us, the following: name, address (city, state, zip, country), email address, gender, birthdate, phone number, login name and hashed password.

Customers outside the United States should be advised that we further discovered evidence that information from an outdated database from 2007 containing approximately 12,700 non-US customer credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes) and about 10,700 direct debit records listing bank account numbers of certain customers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Spain may have also been obtained. We will be notifying each of those customers promptly.” - SOE.com / Station.com

 Just yesterday Sony held a press conference in Japan citing that PSN would be coming back up within the week with 30 days of free PSN Plus access as well as other region-specific free content as part of their "Welcome Back" compensation package. They also discredited claims that credit card info was compromised because of reasons stated previously. Oh, irony!
< Watch The Conference >

Starting this week, some PSN services will come back online. The company has prioritized certain services over others, obviously, and the rollout will happen region-by-region. The list is as follows:

  • Restoration of online game-play across the PlayStation 3 and PSP systems (this includes titles requiring online verification and downloaded games)
  • Access to Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity for PS3/PSP for existing subscribers
  • Access to account management and password reset
  • Access to download un-expired Movie Rentals on PS3, PSP and MediaGo
  • PlayStation Home
  • Friends List
  • Chat Functionality
Sony also reported at their conference that "Anonymous" had no responsibility in these attacks. The New York Times obtained a copy of a letter <view PDF> sent to Sony from members of Congress demanding answers about the attack. Currently all Sony Online Entertainment manged games are offline due to the newly uncovered attack as they work to repair this security issue as well, but it appears the database compromised was outdated from 2007 and US users were safe.

This information, which was discovered by engineers and security consultants reviewing SOE systems, showed that personal information from approximately 24.6 million SOE accounts may have been stolen, as well as certain information from an outdated database from 2007.  The information from the outdated database that may have been stolen includes approximately 12,700 non-U.S. credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes), and about 10,700 direct debit records of certain customers in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Spain


When it rains, it pours.

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