Update on PlayStation Network and Qriocity

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Update on PlayStation Network and Qriocity

Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve the current outage of PlayStation Network & Qriocity services. We are currently working to send a similar message to the one below via email to all of our registered account holders regarding a compromise of personal information as a result of an illegal intrusion on our systems. These malicious actions have also had an impact on your ability to enjoy the services provided by PlayStation Network and Qriocity including online gaming and online access to music, movies, sports and TV shows. We have a clear path to have PlayStation Network and Qriocity systems back online, and expect to restore some services within a week.

We’re working day and night to ensure it is done as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and feedback.

Valued PlayStation Network/Qriocity Customer:
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.

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.

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.

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. 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. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well.

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements and to monitor your credit reports. We are providing the following information for those who wish to consider it:

U.S. residents are entitled under U.S. law to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll-free (877) 322-8228.

We have also provided names and contact information for the three major U.S. credit bureaus below. At no charge, U.S. residents can have these credit bureaus place a “fraud alert” on your file that alerts creditors to take additional steps to verify your identity prior to granting credit in your name. This service can make it more difficult for someone to get credit in your name. Note, however, that because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect you, it also may delay your ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies your identity. As soon as one credit bureau confirms your fraud alert, the others are notified to place fraud alerts on your file. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, or should you have any questions regarding your credit report, please contact any one of the agencies listed below.

Experian: 888-397-3742; www.experian.com; P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
Equifax: 800-525-6285; www.equifax.com; P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
TransUnion: 800-680-7289; www.transunion.com; Fraud Victim Assistance Division, P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790

You may wish to visit the web site of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or reach the FTC at 1-877-382-4357 or 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580 for further information about how to protect yourself from identity theft. Your state Attorney General may also have advice on preventing identity theft, and you should report instances of known or suspected identity theft to law enforcement, your State Attorney General, and the FTC. For North Carolina residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; telephone (877) 566-7226; or www.ncdoj.gov. For Maryland residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; telephone: (888) 743-0023; or www.oag.state.md.us.

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. Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority. Please contact us at 1-800-345-7669 should you have any additional questions.

Sincerely,
Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment

The same information can be found at the following websites:

http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#non-us

For those that live the United States, but not Massachusetts or Puerto Rico:
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#us

If you live in Massachusetts:
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#mass

If you live in Puerto Rico
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#pr

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521 Comments

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  • The FBI and CIA should get in on this ASAP and arrest those hackers. Then we need to get Sony to pay large sums of money through lawsuits for their incompetence and irresponsibility.

    I suspect that places like YouTube will have a lot of rant videos on Sony and a lot of upset gamers going on camera and making videos of them smash and burning all their PlayStation stuff.

  • I love my ps3 but if my idenity gets messed with I will sue sony

  • THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

  • “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. Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority. Please contact us at 1-800-345-7669 should you have any additional questions.”

    And there’s the BS paragraph.

    They keep saying “working around the clock”. To us, that means crap now coming from Sony/PlayStatiion.

  • @93 No, some functions have to wait around one week. The problem is we don´t know what kind of function…

  • Really thanks for all this info Sony. I’ll change all my info including my e-mail’s and other stuff related to my accounts on PSN!

    PS: to sid4peeps and other guys who just want to convert to a 360 because of this incident… it happens. you cant blame on Sony now!! before this happens SONY THE BEST and now you guys says sony sucks ?!?! tsc…. 4gs!! grow up!! this things happens! if it hasnt happened yet on 360….it could happen too its just a metter of time…or…did just happened and they couldnt figured it out…thats more serious!! but now….dont blame on sony!!

    SONY keep the good work…and keep us posted ;)

  • @FRANKMAN1
    Well they say 1 week.
    But that 1 week could “unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances” end up being months or more.

  • oh no duz tht mean all our addresses r taken by the hacker plz reply

  • I will never invest my money into another sony product. This is un acceptable. a multi billion dollar company should not have allowed this to happen. In all your agreements u stateded that all personal info was safe. Now it has been compromised or stolen. Sorry is not acceptable when you are now talking about personal info being stolen.

  • chill out, don’t blame sony, blame the hacker/hackers. And everything will probably be fine.

  • Well, at least we know what truly happened. I guess that the latest firmware updates weren’t so secure after all.

    I hope that PS+, NHL Gamecenter & MLB TV users will be credited for this. We did pay extra to become members.

  • @KNOWLEDGEND – facepalm

    so ur saying SONY’s arrogance had nothing to do with this. the fact that they, DEMANDED to have the IP addresses of people who so much as walked by anything that had the terms PS3 hack in it which means compromising your security and leaving u with NO RIGHTS. or maybe the fact that they removed OtherOS and forced players to choose between updating to have no OtherOS or never having PSN again.

    u SONY defenders confuse the hell out of me. time and time again SONY is literally punching u in the face and all i see u do is keep repeating “i deserve it but i still love sony i deserve it but i still love sony”

    now they’re telling u something u needed to know in the beginning. that ur info may be compromised, who KNOWS what could have happened. some people could have bought lots of things with ur credit info and u STILL choose to defend SONY?

    hackers may have been in the wrong here, but SONY has been in the WORSE and they still keep their arrogant attitude with nothing so much as an apology for what’s happening.

  • “Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened;”

    ..wow. They really did get something important, huh? So, what’s next Sony – potential lawsuit on every citizen on the planet? And request surveillance on everyone for “investigative purposes”?

    Go ahead, Sony. It’ll be great for protecting your business, I’m sure.

  • Sony. This is unacceptable. Stop trying to place the blame on hackers. Why wasn’t PSN up to par on security to START with. If you had been diligent in your efforts to keep security up to date, then this wouldn’t have happened.

    The blame lies with you as well as the hackers. Perhaps this time you won’t build a network that has “good enough” security and actually do your job and get it up to where it needs to be.

    If you were this unprepared for attacks that you have to take down the entire network and rebuild it, you have no business running a 70+ million user network.

  • Take your time Sony take your time….

  • I bet most people complaining here are comfortable knowing that their information on other social networks and services such as Facebook, XBL and Google have been seen by/sold to millions of enterprises and individuals.

    No network is 100% secure people. You want your personal information to be safe? Don’t put it on the internet. To all of those selling their consoles: good riddance. We won’t miss you.

  • Holy crap.

    I hope your new system spreads some of that information better so that it’s at least more time consuming to locate it all.

  • @94

    Why? Honestly find the Sony bashing beyond hilarious. When the dust settles I’m pretty sure the majority of the angry consumers will return to the psn. Forums are breeding grounds for hypocrites :3

  • Time to sue Sony because it was their responsiblity to protect all of this information and they failed! we singed a contract, If I am legally bound to follow all of those things in the contract then u to should be held accountable! I AM SO MAD that you were careless with my information expect a phonecall from my lawyers in the next couple of days sony!

  • i have been a die hard sony fan since the beginning. But now feel rather disappointed. Like others said this could have been foreseen (with sony being hacked by anon just prior to this), better emplacements should have been put in place (dont wait till something like this to strengthen ur networks) This whole mess was not handled in a professional manner, we should have been properly notified of the issue from the beginning. something like personal info being compromised, come on sony we have a right to know this and in a reasonable time.

  • I always deleted my credit card info right after a purchase, is my credit info still at risk or is it completely off the server once deleted?

  • @106 Shadowcrazy

    I think there is some things you dont get… what would you have done if they would told you that your infos might have been stolen??? I mean its not like Sont didnt turn off the whole damn thing so no one else can get access to it….

    “people could have bought lots of things with ur credit info”

    Hmmm I doubt these days that people with credit cards dont go see their bill on internet so you can know anytime and if things were bought with it… its not like theres no insurance for that that will refund you in few days..

    Before panic take a deep breath and wait to see what happen next…

  • I’ll not be purchasing another thing from the PSN.If my personal info has been compromised I will take appropriate legal action against the thief and Sony.

  • Well it’s good I didn’t have a credit card saved on my PS3 sucks it was my banks atm but i have alerts all over that
    it sucks a lot and I don’t know if i’ll use my card again on the PSN I’ll probably go to PSN cards. I won’t be getting rid of my ps3 I like it to much.

  • we wont miss people like you either cronqvist

  • WHY WE SHOULD NOT BLAME IN SONY .. WHO MADE THE PSN AND THE ACCOUNT ??? SONY OR THE HACKERS …… SO LETS SEE FOR EXAMPLE ANY BANK GET HACKED WHO DO U BLAME FOR … THE UNSAFE SECURITY

  • wow……good thing i didnt open those emails sent from some random sorce, but some one might have used my acounts money,,,,,,,,,,,,crap, if they got my email then they might have used my psn acount to buy stuff……… sony what happens if we find out if we were effected, also when the PSN comes back online, will all my pervious DLC and Games still be in my account? if i losse my Dissisdia 012 DLC due to this i will be very upset

  • @unchainedT
    when you lock your door at night and turn on your alarm at night don’t you feel safe
    sony thought the security they had was sufficient and they have been buffing it up as time goes by but nothing is unhackable it has been proven on countless occasions. There are to many ways to get into a system that it is impossible for it to be 100% safe.

  • Part that gets me is the Login and Password data might have been taken as well and if not changed too, so when it comes back online you could not be able to login then to your account to change the details and what not, and since you can’t port your trophies over from one account to another it would mean I would have to start all over again maybe, Trophy hunters will hate that for sure.

    I already have a 20 character password for my account with Alpha Numerical characters so I hope to be safe from creating a new one, But still the timing of this is not great for us gamers. I hope to have the network up tomorrow as I missed all my content and been waiting to play Uncharted 2 online so badly too

    Thank You for the Info

  • @berae – WHAT WOULD I HAVE DONE!?! obviously called the people i need to call to notify them of my account being compromised so they can be on the lookout for obscene purchases

    and just because you can see that people are buying your stuff doesn’t mean you can do much to stop it and the damage would be done so you’d be suffering from watching people mess around with your money that might not be returned

    you tell me to calm down and yet someone could be coming down to my house since they have my address to steal my ps3 and my pc and other valuable things….

    seriously whats with the SONY defense? why are you defending a company that just waited until they got hacked a SECOND time to shut down the PSN and fix it up?

  • For all of you pissed at Sony. Your forgetting that Sony is on OUR side in this, they are doing everything they can right now to get their services back up while trying to ensure that all our data is protected. I really feel sorry for all the flack and hate they are going to receive because of this. I really hope Sony succeeds in this war.

  • what kind of fire walls do u have? ur saying they got everything i put in my account! If i get all these payments on my card im going to leave this f up ps3 /psp forever

  • Looking forward to the Playstation Network coming back online along with a Network Update. That would be nice.

  • Sony should be so embarrassed and look for actions to be taken against them. Expect a lawsuit and/or stocks falling as well as sales dropping.

    This might bring Sony down in the area of Playstation and Playstation Online.

    They took the first attacks as a joke, obviously since they never beefed up security to allow this from happening.

    Sony owes the customers, and credit card holders more than just a wall of posts on how to protect your credit information or an apology(not that they are giving any), this should go without saying. But I would not be surprised if they will pay for this more than they think right now.

  • You all realize it says from “The 17th through the 19th” right? Nobody’s information was stolen after that because Sony had already took action and shut PSN and the other services down.

  • Right about now I’m more concern about my personal info rather than playing games. I hope for everyone sake that nobody has our personal info from PSN.

  • Cripes, that sounds serious. Thanks for the update Patrick.

  • HEY UNCHARTED 2 FAN

  • + Lopez9577 on April 26th, 2011 at 1:11 pm said:
    “If my identity is stolen im going to sue sony.”

    The key word here is “stolen”. Sony did not give your information away. And if it was acquired, it was done illegally and with great purpose. If you attempt to sue Sony, you will only be wasting your own time and money.

    Earlier you mentioned that you will be switching to another system. Good luck there. However the safest thing to do is to not conduct any future transactions online. Goodbye.

  • People need to stop being jerks about it. It’s not like it’s their fault that it was hacked into, just like it wouldn’t be your fault if someone hacked into your computer and screwed it up!

    Everyone needs to relax, at least they’ve figured out the problem and are able to fix it. Unless you are working for Sony, don’t tell them how to run their affairs. Their network was compromised, it was shut down, and they worked to figure out the problem. And now that they figured it out, you’re complaining they didn’t tell us anything earlier? Seriously, that’s ridiculous. I’m sure they didn’t want to jump the gun and say something had happened if it was something else. They wouldn’t want to say it was hacked into early, and find out it was a problem with their servers instead. They wanted to be sure it was what they thought it was before getting people worried.

    Thanks for the update Sony, thankfully I don’t use a credit card on PSN, I just get the PSN Cards. Hopefully they weren’t able to obtain anything that will harm anyones acounts (PSN or credit/bank). Hopefully when it comes back, it’ll be even better than ever!

  • People on this need to totally become adults about this I for one never trust a company with my info with out a CreditScore Company monitoring my stuff i don’t care HOW “Secure” any company says it is it never is gonna be completely safe when evil people are on the internet. Stop Gribeing and get to work and protect your stuff children. Jeeze. At least they told you.

    When PSN is back I’ll be changing my stuff around. Thanks for the Info Sony.

  • I appreciate the update, although it would have been better if it was earlier. This situation sucks, and I hope you can work it out.

  • Will be interesting to see if our wallet balances are still intact as well when PSN does finally get resurrected.

    I’m certainly not squawking about sueing or trading in my PS3(as long as psn does eventually return), but this is still very F’d up.

    I grew up with tele-games, Atari, etc so spare me all the “back to your roots” single player BS when I say this but to me, all 3 PS3 consoles I have are worthless hunks of plastic without the ability to game online. I haven’t turned a single one of them on since about the third day when I realized there was no point in periodically trying to sign in anymore.

  • I absolutely love Playstation, but if anything comes of this to me personally in terms of my personal information being stolen or especially my credit card being used, ALL of my Playstation stuff goes out the door that day.

    I’ll never trust them again, no matter how strong they make the network.

  • @shadowcrazy

    Yea ur right about a lot of things u stated. They could of warned us sooner. But if people were that concerned they should of canceled them credit cards day one. And as far as the ip address thing if thats what needed to be done to stop the cheating I’m all for it. We got hacked through Sony and the little nerds that did it would of done it to whatever company has the biggest gaming community Sony xbox it sucks that their are people out there with nothing better to do then to duck up a video game system lol I mean get real

  • Good thing I have no credit card on my account. Thanks for the update though, and hopefully PSN gets restored soon.

  • @121: their dev and admin-accounts were broken into. Any credit card details for individual users would be too time-consuming to gather, if at all possible.

    So what we have here is Sony’s usual paranoia, coupled with incompetence on the administrative level. The technical solution isn’t actually bad at all. The problem is the way the solution has been used, and the way the network access has been put together, most likely.

    In other words – your information is very likely safe. Sony’s dev and vip-accounts are not. But they’re not going to tell you that. Instead, we’re getting this cute tale about evil hackers who are the source of all problems, etc.

    The truth is that Sony made a dumb mistake. Then they blame and inconvenience their customers once it blows up in their faces. Same old, same old.

  • if you dont use different passwords for other accounts that on you for being ignorant! in this day and age of cyber theft you should never leave a credit card or debt card on any system so again that is on you. it takes less than a minute to delete your card info after you put money in your wallet. people need to take responsablity for there stupidity of leaving credit card info on any computer system that includes pay pal . The only info it really sound like they got is what you can get out of a phone book or off of one of these social media sights. if you are worried about credit card info then take the infomation that they gave you and use JUST STOP WINIE LIKE A BABIE!! DO NOT THINK YOUR INFOMATION IS ANY SAFER ON XBOX LIVE REMEMBER THAT IS MICROSOFT AND THEY GET HACKED ALSO IF NOT MORE.

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