May 07 2011
15 Comments
By Yogesh Ramesh Sharma Internet, Security, Technology

PSN breach – the bigger picture

The attacks (Hackers: 3, Sony: 0)

It shocked me when the first news of Playstation breach came out last week, affecting approximately 80 million customers.

Sony’s embarrassment further increased when SOE breach was added to PSN compromise.

While we are still awaiting PSN network to come back up online (Sony has said it requires more testing before Playstation relaunch), there’s been yet another attack against Sony networks.

Whether or not these attacks are financially motivated or organized by ‘Anonymous’, no way Sony should get away with this. We don’t know who the hackers are yet.

Department of justice has woken up (late, as usual) and with lawsuits against it in the US & some other countries (Canada, UK, Taiwan – list increasing), Sony has to pay lawyers more than their developers!

It’s not a game, Sony. If it is, it’s not entertaining & you’re losing at it.

Regain trust, ever?

While a lot of initial blame has gone to outdated security software (that Sony knew or did not know of), this could trigger a larger wave of loss of consumer trust in Sony.

Sony has kicked off some ass-saving exercises like offering one year free id-theft protection to the American customers, announcing rewards to identify hackers and (naturally) probable changes in leadership. Is that enough? Would that compensate more than 70 million users’ private data?

Slow response & non-definite answers from Sony have angered the customers even more. Also, there’s no clarity yet on whether cloud backup is safe or not. To add to the mess, Sony has not yet made clear what their response to legal authorities in the US was (update me if this information is old).

Tough times for Sony with Playstation still down & no ETA yet. Just like BP suffering from oil spill tragedy..

Sony is utilizing the downtime to strengthen its security & network infrastructure – let’s hope they come back strong!

Opportunities

However, every failure is an opportunity – messier the failure, bigger the opportunity. This incident has already made a lot of organizations including Sony (and governments too) more vigilant about security & cautious about cases of identity theft.

A huge opportunity for id-theft monitoring & verification applications is up for grabs, hear that Tech world?

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15 thoughts on “PSN breach – the bigger picture”

  1. Erica says:
    May 8, 2011 at 10:47 AM

    Spot on!
    This is a great opportunity for security interfaces between users & websites to grow – advantage antivirus industry & payment gateways!
    (Pardon the cynicism) But there’s a high chance these attacks were well-planned & business-motivated.

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    • Yogesh Ramesh Sharma says:
      May 8, 2011 at 11:39 AM

      Thanks for your comment.
      I agree with your ‘cynicism’ (lol!). That level of sophistication is difficult to achieve for an amateur hacker group.
      Even then, Sony should take a lot of blame to have ignored warnings about outdated mechanism &/or possible threats of attacks.
      Market leaders are ‘expected’ to be sensitive. There has to be an intensive & extensive damage-repair.

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  2. Shavonda says:
    May 12, 2011 at 9:24 AM

    It is actually difficult to get familiar people within this topic, however you seem like you no doubt know what you are referring to! Cheers

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  3. shamtest says:
    May 14, 2011 at 8:34 AM

    I can’t seem to access this page from my droid!!!

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  4. Darnell says:
    May 14, 2011 at 11:59 AM

    Hi and thanks for making the effort to describe the terminlogy to the beginners!

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  5. modern warfare 3 says:
    May 17, 2011 at 9:11 PM

    I can’t wait for call of duty modern warfare 3 to come out for Wii!!

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  6. Leana says:
    May 18, 2011 at 2:24 PM

    Cool blog post, I absolutely count on up-dates by you.

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  7. Sandra Schlichting says:
    June 12, 2011 at 8:59 PM

    Dear all,

    For a month or so ago I saw a cartoon video which explained the PSN hack, and why we shouldn’t blame the hackers, but Sony.

    He did that with the analogy of placing a carton of milk in the sun, and said you shouldn’t blame the bacteria for going into the milk, but rather blame the person who the milk in the sun.

    Have any seen this? =)

    Sadly I can’t remember where I found it.

    Lots of love,
    Sandra

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