SONY Services hacked - The Entire Story !

A group of hackers, supposedly an offshoot of the "Anonymous" hacker community hacked the Playstation Network and Qriocity services of SONY. The hackers were not only successful in bringing down the network but also able to gain access to credit card credentials of the users. Once the security people at SONY sensed an attack on their network, they immediately shut down all the services. This was done to prevent loss of any further damage to the network and its users. At the beginning SONY indefinitely closed down the PSN and Qriocity services, which shocked everyone. 

What did the hackers take? they made away with everyones passwords for sure, and also credit card details of many (if not all) users. It is believed that these hackers demanded ransom for the return of the credit card details. This is the main reason why these hackers are not part of the 'core' Anonymous community, who won’t care for financial gains (or so it is assumed). All said the network was down; a lot of gamers were left complaining. Some decided to back Sony during this hardship, some tried to fly to the Xbox camp while some didn't really understand what was going on. 

Also SONY were asked by the US House of Representatives to answer the risk involved for an american consumer which is detailed here.

On 1^st May, SONY announced that all services will be up and running on that weekend, but it was not until 15^th May that the service was restored. This was followed by a letter from Howard Stringer Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sony Corporation. SONY showed how serious they were about this attack by releasing a video which had Kazuo Hirai, executive deputy president of Sony, regretting the unfortunate turn of events and praising the patience of the SONY customers. He also mentions that the attacks are now being investigated by detectives, and with the help of police force they expected to catch the men behind these attacks. On 15th may Sony restored the network partially - The PS store was still down, but PSN was up and running along with Qriocity services. The restoration was done along with a graphical map of america being shown the areas in which the network was being restored. 

Though this brought smiles on some faces, Sony was still red-faced for losing Credit card credentials and for exposing a security hole in their network. Hence they decided to "Welcome back" everyone to PSN. You can read about the Customer Appreciation program here. SONY also decided to give free identity theft protection program for their customers.

For protecting the hacked accounts, SONY required every account password to be reset. it could be done on the console for some accounts while others had to do it on the web browser using the password reset link mailed to the registered e-mail ID. Another hurdle to the restoration process was the sudden surge in number of users on the PSN which led to shutdown of network across regions. This even brought down the PSN web site. However this problem was resolved in a couple of days after which all users could reset their password and log in into their accounts on the web site as well as on the console.

Yes ! SONY appreciation program is really impressive but the only problem was, PSN was not live to download the goodies. The wait continued as many of the gamers were patiently waiting to download games, DLCs and music! 

And now, SONY have given a deadline,2^nd June, within which all services, within North America followed by Europe and then by other regions, will be restores completely. Many have their fingers crossed to put an end to this drama. 

Costly Affair?

There are different reports quoting different damage costs of the hack attack on SONY services. Officially, SONY expects the attack to amount to $170 million on the balance sheets. But research data from the Ponemon Institute estimates a total of $24billion. This heavy price, we suspect includes the impact on future customers as well. Whatever the case this event has been one of the costliest cyber attacks. This can very well be the biggest cyber scam of the Internet era if the hackers use the credit card credentials for “other” purposes. 

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