Sony victims of worst security breach in gaming history

John Blaise
May 2, 2011
3 Comments

Sony Playstation logoSony Playstation must have the same personnel working for them that are employed by British Columbia’s online gambling website PlayNow.com, either that, or they went to the same five minute seminar taught by that suit with apple cores in his briefcase on player security.

Last week news of a major security breach in which client’s information was placed in jeopardy at the hands of hacker rocked the company. This week, has shut down its online-gaming unit after yet another hacker compromised the network.

According to the release, “In the course of our investigation into the intrusion into our systems we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern for us to take the service down effective immediately,” Sony said in a statement.

The first attack on Sony’s PlayStation Network and Qriocity music service exposed the personal information of 77 million customer’s accounts. Sony apologized and disclosed Saturday that a whopping 10 million credit card accounts may have been compromised during the ordeal. That’s not a misprint, 10 million! That makes the PlayNow fiasco look like a brush fire compared to this inferno.

If you’re wondering what the company is doing to clean up this mess, the answer is not enough. Can it ever be enough after this type of a security gaff? I’m sorry but offering to give affected customers 30 days of free access to its Qriocity music-streaming service as well as 30 days of access to its PlayStation Plus online game service is not going to get it done. Sony has said that the company will also provide credit card protection services as necessary for its customers, but again, that’s not enough.

People want answers. People want to know why the one thing that the network was unable to do the one thing that it was supposed to protect, that being their personal information and credit cards.

Congress wants answers too.

Last week a congressional subcommittee demanded answers to a detailed list of questions regarding security concerns. Some of the questions involved answers regarding: when the breach occurred, how much data was stolen and why Sony waited a week before it notified customers.

There are those pissed off consumers who aren’t waiting for answers and have already filed at least two lawsuits in California against Sony, and you can be sure that more are and will be seeking federal class-action suits before long.

At this point, X-Box can go ahead and put its feet up, I know what system I’ll be playing Madden 12 online with, and it sure as hell isn’t a Playstation3.

Shame Sony. Damn Shame.

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Tags: Article, playnow.com, playstation, Sony, xbox360
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