The biggest complaint people now have in the Great PSN Outage of 2011 is concerning the time line of events. When did Sony know our data was "compromised" and how long did it take them to tell us? Yesterday Sony offered some clarification of this point, stating that even though they knew there was an intrusion they didn't learn of the scope of it, or the stolen data, until Monday April 25th.


"We learned there was an intrusion April 19th and subsequently shut the services down. We then brought in outside experts to help us learn how the intrusion occurred and to conduct an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the incident. It was necessary to conduct several days of forensic analysis, and it took our experts until yesterday to understand the scope of the breach. We then shared that information with our consumers and announced it publicly this afternoon."


If they are being forthright then it's good to hear that they weren't sitting on the information for a week, ever fearful of the reaction from the Sony fanbase. However, it does amaze me that it did take them that long, and require the use of on outside computer forensic agency, to discover exactly how bad things were. Either this attack was a severely complicated one, or Sony simply doesn't have a handle on the inner-workings of their own server system.  I would rather believe the former, but after the way this week has played out I'm not about to rule out anything. Hopefully Sony is working diligently to correct what is probably the biggest PR mess since the RROD.


I still recommend you go and change any passwords which may be duplicates of the one you used for your PSN. Amazon accounts, gmail accounts, even XBLA. 75 Million is a lot of personal data, but these things are sold on the black market in bulk and are passed around for a long, long time.


[Source: PlayStation Blog]

Comments

  • Avatar
    Jack
    13 years, 7 months ago

    well considering the 26th of April was actually a tuesday....

  • Avatar
    Jessica
    13 years, 7 months ago

    I think it's funny that the day everyone's PSNs were hacked, my PS3 died all together. I figured it's just a coincidence...
    I have tried logging into my PSN via playstation website, but I can't. It won't let me. So....how exactly would one change their passwords....?

  • Avatar
    Skittles0520
    13 years, 7 months ago

    Sony has just completed one of their 12 steps...I'm not too worried because all i have on their is an account to play online..nothing more...

  • Avatar
    CrossOutlaw
    13 years, 7 months ago

    no way it took that long for them to find out some info was compromised. I mean they even had outside help come in....they should of been saying this on day one "psn got hacked...watch your shit just in case....we working on it"

  • Avatar
    wallball5
    13 years, 7 months ago

    Stupid anti-sony-pro-homebrew-extremists.

  • Avatar
    SJ_1S8
    13 years, 7 months ago

    I can only hope that Sony will learn a lot from this... This isnt the sort of thing that giving out free shit fixes to me. Its not as if they came in broke something in my house and owe me money, but they have delivered a crushing blow to my waning consumer confidence...

  • Avatar
    Gabe
    13 years, 7 months ago

    Hey Joseph, you should also make in known that they could have compromised the secret questions too. So we should change passwords and secret questions. And I also heard something about MW2 servers on Xbox Live having an tangled web of messages going throughout people randomly that somehow grab your information. Just thought I'd mention it.

  • Avatar
    republictiger
    13 years, 7 months ago

    When it comes to external intrusions, companies are by law required to bring an external team to check the issue. This is because personal account information is involved, hence why the FBI began to look into it as well.

  • Avatar
    CrazyDude927
    13 years, 7 months ago

    XBL: 10 PSN: -1 times the entire PS3 fanbase.

  • Avatar
    Aged Milk
    13 years, 7 months ago

    "However, it does amaze me that it did take them that long, and require the use of on outside computer forensic agency, to discover exactly how bad things were. Either this attack was a severely complicated one, or Sony simply doesn’t have a handle on the inner-workings of their own server system."

    This isn't an episode of CSI or some other crime show that makes an investigation look like it takes the course of an afternoon. They had a very broad range of things and information that could have been tampered with. CC and Account information, Trophy information, games on the PSN store, Friends lists, ect. Like they said, all they knew at first was that there was an intrusion. Also another thing to consider, for any data that was stolen, there wouldn't be a big neon sign in it's place saying "MISSING", especially if said intruders didn't delete the information they stole.

  • Avatar
    Kielbasaninja1
    13 years, 7 months ago

    should i warn my psn friends when it comes back up?

  • Avatar
    Szabolcs Peterfi
    13 years, 7 months ago

    I hope that psn will give us cash (for offline time) i'll buy something addon