Sony: We wuz robbed. Again.

A week after disclosing a massive break-in that led to the theft of 77 million user accounts, Sony reported today that hackers have stolen names, addresses and passwords of 25 million more users than previously known. Related: Sony will speed up plans to move its PSN data center to "a more secure (and undisclosed) location."

(Sony's Playstation3 and its game controller are displayed at a showcase at an electronic shop in Tokyo May 1, 2011. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon)

• [deckard68]

  Personalized spam, and personalized attempts to deceive. That is what this breach is about, so far as we know. It is a data set of people names connected to their email addresses. So instead of “Dear Bank Customer, you need to reset your password by visiting bank.crimesrus.com”, it will say “Dear Joe Smith of 123 Happy Lane, you need to reset your banking password…”.

  And some people, senior citizens especially, may be tricked.

  But unless there turns out to be credit card info stolen, this is basically the theft of an up-to-date mailing list. A HUGE one. The password to the PSN network? Worthless. The history of what games you played? No one cares. But boy, even non-criminals would love an up-to-date mailing list. 501c3s would kill for that kind of info so they could personalize their fundraising emails.

  • [Anonymous]

    The password to the PSN network may be worthless but in a lot of cases it will be the same as the email, paypal, wow, etc. one.

  • [Rob]

    Call it a hunch, but I don’t think there’s many senior citizens on Everquest or PSN

• [DWittSF]

  Geohot has a great blog post up about this, and he’s 100% spot on:

  Now until more information is revealed on the technicals, I can only speculate, but I bet Sony’s arrogance and misunderstanding of ownership put them in this position. Sony execs probably haughtily chuckled at the idea of threat modeling. Traditionally the trust boundary for a web service exists between the server and the client. But Sony believes they own the client too, so if they just put a trust boundary between the consumer and the client(can’t trust those pesky consumers), everything is good. Since everyone knows the PS3 is unhackable, why waste money adding pointless security between the client and the server? This arrogance undermines a basic security principle, never trust the client.

  http://geohotgotsued.blogspot.com/

• [Anonymous]

  Sony aren’t to blame. As long as some one can create security some one out there can bypass it. Check how many major websites have been hacked in the last few months. Listen to sarcastic gamer playstation podcast for a proper perspective.

• [grs]

  I heard Osama bin Laden was caught because he called Sony customer service to see if his Playstation account had been hacked.

• [deckard68]

  I heard there’s a mansion opening up to buyers shortly.

• [Jack]

  I hear Abbottabad has a nice empty place ripe for a datacenter…

  *chirps* *chirps* *chirps* *howl* *chirps* *chirps*

  Okay, seriously, Sony. HOW!?!?!?!? Something this massive. HOW?!?!?!?!?

• [JM]

  You know’s laughing hardest?

  Nintendo.

• [Blackbird]

  So…is this all of the data yet?

  • [brianary]

    I think SonyStyle.com is still pending.

• [technogeek]

  This is _almost_ enough to make me sympathize with Sony’s decision to kill the OtherOS feature (removing the PS3′s ability to run Linux). On the other hand, that was _almost_ enough to make me feel Sony’s security people clearly had their eye on the wrong ball.

  Grumph. Either way.

• [edgore]

  If the LOCATION of their data center has anything to do with their problems they should probably just give up right now.

  • [cratermoon]

    That’s just what I was thinking, edgore. Isn’t the fundamental problem really that either the sensitive personal/credit card information is either stored on the same system as the game servers or on a system that is somehow trusted or too easily compromised once the game servers are hacked? Sony is doing something seriously wrong if they expect the user hardware to be secure to enough to be their main line of defense against intrusions. First rule of computer security: never trust the hardware in the hands of an untrusted third party.

• [oldtaku]

  FFS Sony. If the physical location of your data center is an issue then you’re even stupider than we were giving you credit for. Maybe you can use Tor to hide teh eye-pees?

• [Anonymous]

  I read that prior to the hacking, Sony was already building a new Server installation in a new location – these events have brought the move date forward…I guess changing location to the new installation adds more security due to the hardware that is in place & moving now means less disruption for us in the long term.

  • [Jack]

    What about this magical “cloud” I keep on hearing about? Amazon’s “cloud” goes down and brings slews of sites down. Sony’s “cloud” is hacked and 1,000,000,000+ users have their data compromised.

    I’m keeping my landline.

• [kibbee]

  How were passwords stolen? Shouldn’t they be salted and hashed? Seriously how can Sony be so stupid about this stuff? However, after owning a MiniDisk player and having to put up with SonicStage, it doesn’t surprise me. For anybody who complains about iTunes, you’ve never used SonicStage. I also can’t believe they are so insecure that all accounts and credit cards can be accessed by hacking into the game network.

• [ibbers]

  on an unrelated matter – boingboing have you increased the amount of adverts on the site?

  hell of a lot more advertising clutter nowdays it seems.

• [EH]

  Sony should not be allowed to take credit cards.

  • [morcheeba]

    too late… Sony Bank is issuing their own credit cards.
    http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201103310375.html

• [Steiny]

  Sailor Mars has the answers to all Sony’s problems.

• [Anonymous]

  I guess http://ispsnupyet.com may be wrong..

• [petsounds]

  This summary is a bit sparse on details. The 25 million additional users were from the Sony Online Entertainment network, completely separate from PSN. This network handles their (shitty) MMORPGs like Everquest and Star Wars: Galaxies.

  100 million users. That’s roughly one third of the entire population of the USA.

  This kind of systemic, gargantuan negligence of people’s trusted data needs to be criminalized.