PlayStation Network Security Update

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On Tuesday, April 26 we shared that some information that was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. Once again, we’d like to apologize to the many users who were inconvenienced and worried about this situation.

We want to state this again given the increase in speculation about credit card information being used fraudulently. One report indicated that a group tried to sell millions of credit card numbers back to Sony. To my knowledge there is no truth to this report of a list, or that Sony was offered an opportunity to purchase the list.

One other point to clarify is from this weekend’s press conference. While the passwords that were stored were not “encrypted,” they were transformed using a cryptographic hash function. There is a difference between these two types of security measures which is why we said the passwords had not been encrypted. But I want to be very clear that the passwords were not stored in our database in cleartext form. For a description of the difference between encryption and hashing, follow this link.

To reiterate a few other security measures for your 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 continue to work with law enforcement and forensic experts to identify the criminals behind the attack. Once again, we apologize for causing users concern over this matter.

Our objective is to increase security so our customers can safely and confidently play games and use our network and media services. We will continue to provide updates as we have them.

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443 Comments

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  • Erm why does normal gaming news on this site + the other PS.Blog sites have to stop because of this news???

    I still can play my PS3(i have had a excellent time over easter playing my on my PS3, i don’t rely on PSN really anyway) Gaming news doesn’t have to stop on this site just because PSN is down(god i miss the PS1 + PS2 days where we didn’t have all this online [DELETED], i really do)

    Come on ‘GAMING’ news please now;) (+the odd update on PSN if you must) :D

  • Blah blah blah, WHEN US THE ONLINE COMING BACK?!?!
    Ahem, sorry. Thanks for the update though! I’m glad Sony takes the time to make sure that instead of the online just popping back on, they go through many measures not just for optimal user pleasure, for our safety. Bless ’em.

  • I actually have an important question. A cousin of mine’s PSN account is tied to an e-mail he had on his old phone. He no longer has this e-mail address and he had a yellow light problem two years ago, so he ended up buying a PS3 slim. How will he be able to access his account? He has several games and DLC all tied to his account.

  • yeh… no PSN today… no PSN tomorow… no PSN next week…
    F**K!

  • More Sony delays. Just when we thought we would get PSN back soon…

    Any single player game recommendations? I finished my backlog and online/multiplayer is useless…

  • You said within a week last Tuesday!! What is going on? Have you lied once again?!

  • SOOPERGOOMAN187

    @ killerelf, It sounds like you are the only one making threats to me.
    what with your 7331 speak there and all. Im not afraid of some bunch of hackers, what are they gonna do, turn to murder? I hope they get everything coming to them, they are a bunch of NERDS, as for the FBI, Im Canadian so I dont have a local branch.
    Dont assume everyone is American on this blog. And no I will not goto them, I want to speak with someone at Sony because at least then I know the right info will get to the right people, unlike the fbi’s previous handling of certain cases (9/11)in your country. Now I think you are probably a kid as there were alot of typos in your message and that soopermoog bit was not one bit funny. Its Soopergooman. I got your name right the first time and so you should have gotten mine right the first time but alas you were trying to be funny. Of which you failed epically for all to see. I have a feeling you’re one of the PSN hackers yourself. Just by the tone of your writings towards me…

    show some bloody respect to others.

    Sony if you want the info, you know how to reach me. I only will trust sony with it. oh for the rest who asked, do a google search on Math PS3 Hacker.

  • Apr 26, 2011 – + Posted by Patrick Seybold // Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media

    “We have a clear path to have PlayStation Network and Qriocity systems back online, and expect to restore some services within a week.”

  • I’m starting to get the shakes LOL

  • obiadekanobi1980

    @award tour it not right they can say one thing and do annother its about time they told us that it wont be on for a while and stop giving us all these false hopes it makes me sad also that they dont answer our posts its not like they cnt because they answerd one guys post on this thread so they can use it there end im an eu customer and cannot access the eu pages to comment because the cookie has expired but the cookie on the american blog keeps on going theres something up with that and our blog manager james g should keep us informed on here as most of the posts on here at the mo is from eu users.

    sony the content that u are showing us is just wrong the press release wasnt for us it was to shut the media up with all there scaremongering were ur customers not bbc news or any othere twisted news agency watching the reporting the last week has proven to me how bitter and twisted western news media truly is it makes u think what other stories they have messed with. CONT IN NEXT POST

  • obiadekanobi1980

    bbc news this morning said that because of the SOE breach this takes the total customers affected to 100 MILLION!! lol now we all know out of the reported 77 million accounts only about 45 million of those accounts are main accounts christ i have 4 accounts on US one JAP one EU(my main account) and my purchases account where i buy stuff for me brother when he stays at mine so theres 4 but i only play and use my EU account and i kow alot of ppl who do this because the other regions get demos and other things b4 we do and it pissed me off so much that i set up the other two, good example is free realms i wanted to try it but sony i there infinite wisdom only gave it to the US while screwing the other regions we asked for a demo on the EU blog but as usual they didnt answer us once so i dl it from my american account problem solved if sony didnt force us to do things they wouldnt have these network problems in the first place. CONT IN NEXT POST

  • obiadekanobi1980

    SONY MY QUESTION TO U IS WHEN WILL THE NETWORK BE ONLINE AGAIN AS MY CONSUMER LOYALTY IS WEARING REALLY THIN AND I DONT KNOW HOW MANY MORE DAYS I CAN SIT HERE AND READ ALL THE LIES U SPOUT ABOUT THE DATES WE DESERVE TO KNOW SONY AS U HAVE LET US DOWN BIG TIME AND IM NOT ON ABOUT THE HACK IM ON ABOUT UR CUSTOMER RELATIONS AND THEY WAY UR BLOG MANAGERS CONTINOUSLY IGNORE OUR IMPORTANT COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS IF U GUYS HAD A SPINE YOU WOULD TELL US HOW LONG ACTUALLY NEED INSTEAD OF GIVING US A NEW DATE EVERY COUPLE OF DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LAST WEEK FOR ME THEN ITS GOING TO GET SOLD AND NO I WONT BUY AN XBOX I JUST WONT PLAY CONSOLES ANY MORE………………………………..

    1 MORE LOST LOYAL CUSTOMER

  • I’m with you, its getting real old. I was so happy when you guys came on the scene and were the alternative to the children minded Nintendo. My loyalty has been rock solid but now wearing away. I have alot of money in this glorified dvd system. I only play select games mainly strategy war sims, which the market ignores for zombies and shoot em ups. I’ll probably last longer than OBIA but not much.

  • OH! Look at that, no PSN up, yet. Just like I predicted, thanks for lying again, Sony. I highly even DOUBT that we get PSN till next week sometime. That’s right, not this week like Sony has stated, but next week. Great job on being great liars, Sony. Take your fans for a loop then laugh it out. Literally punching us in the face, again.

    Here’s an idea, Sony: If you don’t know when its gonna be up or you’re guessing when its gonna be up. DON’T TELL US! PERIOD! Don’t say a week from a certain day, don’t even say a week. All this does is get our hopes up for another false prediction.

    “Sometime this week”, eh Sony? I highly doubt that. All we ask is to KEEP your word for once in the companies life span.

  • i love how people are freaking out because its taking longer than a week…they said theyre TRYING for a week but their network is super complex and will take time. we are still going faster than the 15 day outage xbox had a few years ago.

  • SOOPERGOOMAN187

    Im calling my lawyer today, this is long enough, your shareholders are dropping your stock like a sack of bricks.
    You said TODAY MAY 3rd the psn would be back up. That’s an agreement you made with 77 million customers. A legal agreement at that. Fed up with this, Im going back to R/C aircraft as my main hobby again……

  • SOOPERGOOMAN187

    @ penstatecivic the xbox live downtime was only 11 days and they gave everyone a free good game for their troubles, live gold members got extended time on their purchase of gold and silve people got a month free of gold status. thats a pretty good apology. Also how super complex is it really? Just install a new security firewall system, encrypting data is done by computer and not hand so that shouldn’t take up to three weeks to do. Also the hackers didnt go after our info, they went for dev accounts to bypass security so their hacked ps3’s could get online. Nothing to do with OUR INFORMATION AT ALL. all lies guys, all lies……

  • lalalala…..

    Got up late today, was a bit excited as thought PSN was going to be up….

    Guess I can go back to bed. Pfft

    Where’s our online already?

  • obiadekanobi1980

    its sad that the only ppl answering our comments is others users lol thanks acecard 1 i might last a few days more but my mate came over last night with his 360 and we played online on mw2 for a few hours and i was like ninja and meditated with my SCAR AND MY aa-12 LOL

    i agree though that they are ignoring us on purpose so they dont comment because the news corps are watching the eu and us blogs for any little bit of info which they can twist into more lies so thats why they aint answering comments but still a little support and some comments about actual games would be nice on there part its sad that they always clam up when there doing the hiding.

  • Thank you, Mr. Seybold, for answering my question. This was my main point of concern at this point.

  • @soopergoo

    I was not making threats towards you. And if not the FBI then the RCMP. Thing is, I have worked in network security. And I am good friends with one of the IT Sec. guys at my current employer. We were being probed at a higher than normal rate at the same time PSN, Amazon and the others were being attacked. We were lucky. Because of the nature of the clients we host, we employ the highest level of IT security measures and counter measures available. We were alerted early to this attack and contained it. Others were not so lucky. At the time, we thought we were the only ones being attacked. We did not learn until later about PSN, Amazon and others.

    I know the element. Some of them are just script kiddies. Most in fact. But this attack, which is not limited to Sony, appears to be a much more co-ordinated attack. These people could be dangerous. If you do have info on them, you shouldn’t be so public about it. Yes, definitely, report it. But do it quietly.

  • This was a highly co-ordinated, multi-target, multi-vector attack. Not the work of your garden variety script kiddies. Though script kiddies may have been utilized for some targets and some attack vectors.

    I posted the posts directed at you out of genuine concern. You may be inadvertently setting yourself up for a bad situation.

  • this is getting crazy sony almost 2 weeks and you can’t get the network up due to your poor development of security next time before you launch consider every possibility I would have.

  • @jazzyrider….not sure what you have but here’s my suggestions for single player:

    Bioshock, Borderlands, Darksiders, Mini Ninjas, LBP – There, that’s a few different types of games too…..if you favor one genre more than others, or knew what you just finished….might be able to give better recommendations.

  • Was hoping to be playing online at this time today……hmmmm, now to set up another attack on my single player trophies it seems.

    Onward to hear the glory of the *ding*

    :)

  • @soopergoo
    I am not a kid. I have been in Unix Admin for 28 years. But I am dyslexic. Which is why I am prone to typos. As for my handle, I was given that by a fellow admin because of my short stature and my aggressive attitude towards systems administration.

  • For the past two weeks or so the PS BLOG were posting nothing but updates on the PSN outage but what about games and other PlayStation related things? Not all of them require PSN or are only on PSN. Wan’t there a game coming out today, I can’t remember which.

  • I think Motorstorm Apocalypse is out today, am I right? If so did anyone buy it or play it yet?

  • All i know is a crap load of content better be up from all the missed store updates. Becuase i know alot of games are coming out or have came out last week..

    Ty agn

  • @AwardTour

    Apr 26, 2011 – + Posted by Patrick Seybold // Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media

    “We have a clear path to have PlayStation Network and Qriocity systems back online, and expect to restore some services within a week.”

    .
    .
    .
    .

    I think that was the closest thing we got to a date. Today is now 7 days since that was posted. I just checked and it’s still not up. Maybe it’ll be up later today or something since it s 8:33 AM in California right now.

    @PaperCarrier
    Today, a few games are coming out in the US for the PS3.

    Back to the Future: The Game – Episode III: Citizen Brown
    MotorStorm: Apocalypse
    Thor: God of Thunder
    Under Siege

    05/10/2011
    Brink
    LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game
    MX vs. ATV Alive
    Virtua Tennis 4

    05/17/2011
    L.A. Noire

    05/24/2011
    DiRT 3
    Kung Fu Panda 2: The Video Game
    Naughty Bear (Gold Edition)

    05/31/2011
    Hunted: The Demon’s Forge

  • So is psn going to back up this week.

  • 06/01/2011
    D.N.A

    06/07/2011
    Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters
    inFamous 2
    Kevin Van Dam Fishing
    Operation Flashpoint: Red River
    Red Faction: Armageddon
    Supremacy MMA

    06/14/2011
    Alice: Madness Returns
    Days of Thunder: NASCAR Edition (w/Blu-Ray)
    Duke Nukem Forever
    Record of Agarest War Zero
    Top Gun (w/Blu-Ray Movie)
    Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    UFC Personal Trainer: The Ultimate Fitness System

    06/17/2011
    American McGee’s Alice

    06/21/2011
    Cars 2: The Video Game
    Dungeon Siege III
    F.3.A.R.
    Shadows of the Damned
    Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Classic Trilogy HD

    06/28/2011
    Call of Juarez: The Cartel
    Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3
    Sniper: Ghost Warrior
    Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition

  • @aspoochjr Well they did say that “within a week” on April 26. Today is the 7th day (i.e. a week).

  • 07/05/2011
    Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon

    07/12/2011
    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

    07/19/2011
    Captain America: Super Soldier

    07/26/2011
    Catherine

    08/02/2011
    Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension
    Spec Ops: The Line
    White Knight Chronicles II

    08/23/2011
    Deus Ex: Human Revolution

    08/26/2011
    Rugby World Cup 2011

    08/30/2011
    Driver: San Francisco
    Madden NFL 12

    That’s all the scheduled game releases on the US PS3 from now til the end of August…well what’s scheduled to come out as of today.

  • So am I returning my PS3 and all my games? I’m honestly getting sick and tired of this…

  • @xxnike629xx Thanks for all the updates. Why haven’t developers/publishers been advertising any games and products in the past weeks? Is it because they’re pissed at SONY or because they can’t?

  • Sorry but SOE is another step. Bank details and credit card details. Sony, your going to have to pay big money for this..

  • obiadekanobi1980

    ive given up waiting for some sort of responce today or any day for that matter they have failed big time i hope there shares drop to zero thats the only thing that will hurt them now

  • Hope you guys read this comment!

    How are you planning on updating the store since it missed 2 updates already?

  • What a bunch of pathetic crybabies there are repeat commenting on here. I hope the PSN is down another week just for you. Get a damned life.

  • ….agreed that the developers could be posting information about games just so we have something else besides these ‘updates’.

    What’s the scoop?? Sony not allowing it during this time, because I highly doubt developers/publishers would miss any opportunities to promote their products. Especially right now since there is nothing else on this blog so likely everyone on here would be reading that as well.

    Give us something else to look at on the blog!!!

  • LIES LIES LIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! why isnt psn up today? because sony is lieying to us once agian. IF you wanna gain our trust back you cant be doing this constantly sony….

  • ohh welll thas intresting i hope this problem have a quick solution

  • @RyuuSkyez
    Well as Sony has been saying, they’re working “around the clock” the ensure that everything is safe before putting it back online. But apparently with SOE hacked now, I don’t think they feel safe enough to even get PSN up, let alone the PS Store since even though they are 2 different entities, there has to be some overlap in the network.

  • tomorow what… they’ll find breach in korean servers too?!

  • I have a feeling that Sony will ditch the home console market and stick with handhelds.

    I really don’t think Sony can recover from this financially nor regain the trust of a lot of its previous clients.

  • On some basic level, I’m taking comfort in the fact that others (such as #153’s cousin, plus whomever else who hasn’t as of yet posted) is in the same predicment as I am. At least I’m not alone in this & I’m not the only one concerned. Although Packtrick Seybold didn’t go into much detail, he did mention, albeit briefly, in response to #17 that there are other methods in place to validate accounts, although using your original PS3 and/or using email are the primary ways.

    In a worst case scenario, I suppose there’s 1 possibility to ake some headway: call Sony’s 800#, ask to speak to the supervisor to air your concerns, and (if need be) raise a proverbial stink over the situation on some of the gaming-related talk shows on allgames.com to create awareness of the situation. These 2 things, when used in tandem, helped me out last year when I got the YLoD twice within 3 months & needed to get my previously purchased PSN videos back.

  • Oh, on a semi-related note, there’s a gaming podcast called The B-Team that you all may wanna give a listen to, or @ least, specifically episode 101. This perticular episode is 3 hours long, but go ahead & ignore the 1st hour. Starting @ the 1 hour – 1 hour 5 minute mark, there’s a hefty discussion about this whole PSN this: causes, coming back online, long-lasting ramifications, etc.

  • so any chances for getting online gaming back today huh?

  • I really tired of these hackers.. hacking every thiing.. I hope they take the letter we sent to sony headquaters very important and work to get rid of sites that are how to hack or cheat in games down and illegal in the world of internet.

    Becuase all it does is habor criminal activity, if they want hack and etc get a dam pc. ,. A console is not for that, noor is helping games become bettter for everyone . I wish the new head of sony sercurity would send the dea and cia and atf after these hackers.

    There not hard to find just google how hack ps3 and you’ll hve all the sites in a straight line. Go after forums s site like next gen. ps3 hax., those are the site’s harboring these criminals of hackers . Better send the d.e.a to all there houses and have em ran sacked and trashed and forclosed. We need result pronto!!

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