Sony Admits PSN Was Attacked, Personal Information Was Compromised, Shit Hits Fan Hard

Oh, snap.  It looks as if all of our fears have become realities.  Sony has released a statement confirming that the downtime of the Playstation Network was due to an “illegal intrusion” and that your personal information may very well have been compromised.  Oh shit is right…

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:

  1. Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;
  2. Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and
  3. Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.

But just how much of your personal information may have been compromised?  Well… quite a bit actually:

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.

Furthermore, Sony has stated that they will not be asking for any of your information and if anyone does, it is likely a scam:

Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking.

They has also recommended that you stay vigilant and monitor your bank account statements and credit reports, which you should be doing anyway you lazy deadbeats!!

Last, but not least, Sony… is sorry

We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of this incident, and we regret any inconvenience. Our teams are working around the clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as possible. Sony takes information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that additional measures are taken to protect personally identifiable information.

If you or someone you know isn’t as gamer savvy as you, you may want to spread the word so that they can take measures to insure none of their personal information has been used maliciously.

Stay tuned to RipTen for continued coverage of PSNightmare 2011. Yeah, I just coined that term. Ya dig?

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  • stlcardinal9sr

    This is really bad news for Sony, how can a huge TECH corporation not have the safeguards in place to prevent this????

    • stlcardinal9sr

      Actually I have just read that what has happened is that with the PS3 homebrew applications, users with hacked PS3s were able to turn their PS3s into developer consoles or at least disguise them as developer consoles which allowed them to download games and movies for free off the playstation store. And after this homebrew info began to spread Sony realized what was going on and shut down the network. So in reality I dont think anyones personal info was a target it was just that in order to access the Playstation store as a developer you would have to go through a secure server of Sonys which in return would cause them to have to let us know it is possible that our info was obtained when in reality it probably wasnt. Sony shut down the network due to illegal downloads of merchandise from homebrew machines but of course they will never admit that.

  • http://www.creditcardassist.com creditcardassist

    If you ever used a credit card on the PlayStation Network, there’s a chance that someone out there now has that information; the PSN has been hacked. Sony is doing the best that they can in a really tough situation.