Sony is revealing the reason for the disabling of the PSN: hackers succeeded in hacking and stealing personal information of the service’s users.
Do you have a PSN account? Your personal details may be in danger. In an announcement issued by Patrick Seybold director of communication and social media for Sony, the reason for the disabling of the PSN network for over a week has been revealed: apparently, hackers succeeded hacking the PSN servers and stealing personal information about the users of the service.
In the announcement posted on the PlayStation’s blog, Seybold writes that Sony discovered that between April 17-19 an illegal and unauthorized hacking was performed to its network. The moment the hack was discovered, Sony disabled the network and since then, the PSN has been down.
Sony estimates that a lot of personal information was stolen from their servers. The information includes logging details (email and password), address, date of birth and full name. in addition, details such as purchasing history, billing address, credit card and security question for the service are also in danger, but Sony haven’t reached a final conclusion whether these details were stolen or not.
In addition, Sony warn that a certain risk exists that credit cards through which purchases on the PSN store were conducted were stolen, and recommend customers examine their charge details, and if necessary turn to their credit cards’ fraud division.
The biggest concern due to such a hacking is the abuse of these details, that can be used by hackers to hack PSN users email accounts (if they use the same password on their email and Sony’s network) and from there hack Facebook, PayPal and other accounts.
Due to this hacking, Sony’s PSN network has been disabled for over a week. This means that PS3 and PSP console users cannot participate in mass online games, make purchases on the virtual store and use other network service.
Sony are working hard these days to strengthen their security grid massively and estimate it will be back online in about a week. It’s not clear why Sony didn’t reveal this critical information immediately and if the company know personal details were stolen off of its servers days before its released the information.
If you have a PSN account and are concerned about the hack, here are a number of actions to take in order to be secure:
1. Changing passwords – if you’re using the same password in different network services, you should quickly change it. generally you want to use a different password for each service your register to. Change your email password immediately and then your password to financial services such as PayPal.
2. Change your security question – similarly to changing your password, make sure you change your security question to the services you registered to.3. Watch your credit card – fortunately, credit card companies have fraud prevention call centers that succeed in tracking in advance and preventing theft. If your credit card number has been stolen, it is more than likely that your credit card will track it long before financial damage is done. Be available in case your credit card company tries to contact you. It is also recommended to sign up to a text messaging service that alerts you for every purchase made through your credit card online.
Read the Anonymous' letter here for more information.
